Passions

I went to see a foreign film tonight called "The Secret in Their Eyes" (El Secreto De Sus Ojos). It's about a criminal-court investigator named Benjamin Esposito who, in 1974 in Buenos Aires, took up a case revolving around the rape and murder of a beautiful woman. He never forgets about it as he grows older, how he passionately pursued the killer, and what he learned about himself along the way. The first scene is of Esposito at his desk, gray-bearded, writing and assembling his recollections of this case that continues to fascinate him after twenty-five years. The film centralizes around the use of memory and how it can haunt us with missed opportunities. For Esposito, these missed opportunities regarding a love that never happened make up a meaningless, unhappy passage of time: the underside of obsession. This doesn't just go for him, though. Time stops for the beautiful woman's husband, Morales, who waited every day after work at the train station for a chance of spotting his wife's killer. Then there is Irene Menendez Hastings, Esposito's cautious superior who, after failing to get Esposito to confess his feelings for her, goes into a loveless marriage and continues on with a seemingly passionless existence, becoming a powerful judge in 2000. From scene to scene, the film has a vital swing to it. It is powerfully and richly imagined. It is a genre-buster that successfully combines romanticism with the utmost in realism. It's probably the most excellent film I've seen in a very long time. I highly recommend it. Two-thumbs up.