Risky gamble pays off for Julia Roberts and Nicole Kidman
JULIA ROBERTS
Julia Roberts took a risky gamble when she decided to act in “Secret In Their Eyes,” director Billy Ray’s remake of Juan Jose Campanella’s Oscar-winning Argentine film, “El Secreto De Sus Ojos,” about an FBI agent, Jess (Roberts), whose world falls apart when she realizes that the unknown dead body she’s investigating belongs to—her only daughter, Carolyn!
For Roberts, her character’s incomprehensible loss resonated with her even more when her cancer-stricken mother passed away shortly after she began shooting the movie. A year earlier, the death of Julia’s depressive half-sister became tabloid fodder when the latter reportedly left a suicide note blaming her “so-called siblings” for driving her over the edge!
Julia plumbs deep into her inner demons and personal woes, and delivers a textured portrayal devoid of histrionic excesses and distracting bravado.
In the film, Jess is forced to revisit the rape and gruesome murder of her twentysomething daughter when her returning colleague, Ray (Chiwetel Ejiofor), asks District Attorney Claire (Nicole Kidman) to reopen the unsolved case 13 years after he quit his job.
Ray claims to have found Carolyn’s elusive murderer, but Jess is inexplicably convinced that his leads are nothing but red herrings that unnecessarily reopen old wounds—and unleash a string of confounding revelations!
Cathartic finale
The diverting twists in the run-up to the film’s cathartic finale alternately frighten and fascinate—but, while it sprints to its homestretch with thrilling, edge-of-your-seat urgency, the movie is nonetheless weighed down by scenes in its first half that get mired in ponderous melodrama, as it shuttles between past and present in a confusing jumble of claustrophobic events. It’s a storytelling tack that, while initially gripping, confuses more than it clarifies.
We’ve seen the 2009 original which, while more noirish in tone, is noteworthy for its free-flowing narrative (examining the rape and murder of the protagonist’s wife), made more absorbing by its ensemble’s riveting turns and the production’s gut-wrenching conclusion.
There’s something missing in the film’s Hollywood incarnation, but the performances of the deglamorized Julia and her costars are just as exceptional: You won’t see any hint of the Pretty Woman’s famous Tinseltown smile as she embraces the challenges and complexity of her demanding role.
Her award-worthy intensity exposes the tepidity of the movie’s struggle to accommodate its antiterrorism subtext in post-9/11 America.
Roberts delves deep into Jess’ dark side with a vanity-free characterization that makes her look wrinkly and frumpy beside the glorious Kidman, who smolders and sizzles in her foreplay-like scenes and subtle flirtations with the intense Ejiofor.
Instructively, the film is as much a gamble for Nicole as it is for Julia, because the character she portrays relegates her to second-lead status. But, as they say, they are no small roles, just “small” actors.
The budding, star-crossed romance between Ray and Claire, skillfully handled by Kidman and Ejiofor with care and disarming sensitivity, is one of the disturbing thriller’s leavening elements. It keeps viewers invested in the touch-and-go tension that the movie’s director fails to consistently sustain.
