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.
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