Tell No One

[July 30th, 2008]

Tell No One isn’t just the name of French actor-turned-director Guillaume Canet’s latest offering—it’s advice anyone who has seen this electrifying thriller should heed regarding its serpentine plot. The less you know, the bigger the payoff. Being blindsided by the film’s clever twists, cold-sweat pursuits, tragic romance and stellar performances is a distinct cinematic pleasure. Canet turns the French thriller—oft maligned for its psychosexual nonsense and stream-of-consciousness pretension—on its head with the story of a pediatrician (Francois Cluzet, superbly meshing isolationist fear with heart) who finds himself the prime suspect in his wife’s decade-old murder.

Although Tell No One is based on a novel by Harlan Coben, it’s clear Canet (better known as a dreamboat actor from junk like The Beach) is a student of Hitchcock. Hitchcock perfected the now-familiar “wrongly accused” formula of an innocent on the run from cops and crooks while unraveling a conspiracy bigger than himself. The Master can be sensed throughout Tell No One, with Young and Innocent, The Lady Vanishes, Vertigo and Frenzy particularly prominent.

But Hitchcock isn’t present only in plot. He’s here in principle, especially his oft-quoted notion that suspense isn’t about the gunshot—it’s about the anticipation of the bang. Tell No One is relentless in its anticipatory suspense. Whether dodging cars in a frantic foot chase or accusations in an office, Canet and his hero play it taut and sweaty. But saying this is a Hitchcock redux is shortchanging the director. He’s a student of suspense throughout the ages—from Fritz Lang to David Lynch, Canet’s influences sculpt a world of fast-paced action, urban chaos, family tragedy, creepy villains and paranoid delusion.

It’s not a perfect film by any stretch. Considerable time is wasted on saccharine flashbacks and things are tied up a bit too tidily in the end. But for classical thrills mixed with new-school techniques, Tell No One delivers a unique kick. It’s a universal thriller, a meditation on loss, and a look at the grimy depths good people are willing to plumb and the good inherent in bad men. It’s a thriller of the finest caliber, a pulse-pounder with a brain that takes its toll in equal measure on the fingernails and the cerebellum.