The Secret in Their Eyes review

The Secret in Their Eyes (18, 129 mins)
Director: Juan Jose Campanella

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Argentina’s The Secret in Their Eyes caused gasps earlier this year when it pipped strong favourites The White Ribbon and A Prophet to the Oscar for best foreign film. But while it may not quite be on a par with Haneke’s chilling German effort, this engrossing thriller makes a worthy winner. The terrific Ricardo Darín plays Esposito, a retired Buenos Aires prosecutor attempting to write a novel about a murder case he worked on in the 70s. Told mainly in flashback, we see how the investigation affected him in the intervening decades, stealthily weaving Esposito’s personal life and relationship with his boss Irene into a compulsive narrative that manages to be genuinely surprising. Haunting and graceful, it reveals its secrets slowly, only occasionally threatening to lose its grip, before bursting to life during an astonishing chase at a football match that delivers one of the most impressive sequences of the year.

Tetro review

Tetro (15, 127 mins)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Godfather is beginning to look like another lifetime for Francis Ford Coppola. His latest sees a young American travel to Buenos Aires to visit Tetro (Vincent Gallo), the brother he hasn’t seen in years. He wants to reconnect and learn about their family past but the truculent Tetro wants little to do with him. Lengthy for such a slim story, this is tough going. Shot in shimmering black and white, it’s beautiful but often impenetrable, and, with its theatricality and frequent allusions to the cinema of Powell and Pressburger, too much like Euro art-house for its own good. It’s far from the most expansive or interesting work Coppola has done and hard to recommend even for die-hard fans, although his name remains the only reason Tetro is getting a cinema release. But just because you directed the best film ever made doesn’t mean you can get away with anything.