Ill-Informed Gadfly

The exhilarating Hitchcockian thriller “Tell No One” is like heroin for movie lovers. I haven’t felt such a high walking out of a theater since — well, probably since I saw Hitchcock’s “The Lady Vanishes” for the first time last winter. I was tingly all over. French actor-turned-writer-director Guillaume Canet has crafted a suspenseful, emotionally resonant and dazzlingly complex murder mystery/love story. As in many twisty thrillers, the explanation is not as compelling as the setup — the first two-thirds of “Tell No One” contain some of the best moviemaking I’ve seen this decade, and Canet can’t sustain that level through the final act. But by that point you’re hooked, and you can forgive him for easing off the accelerator and meandering just a bit.

I’ll tread carefully here so as not to give away too much of the plot — stop reading and come back after the movie if you want! (I was happy I knew nothing going in.) “Tell No One” begins with a wine-soaked family gathering in the French countryside; the next day, on their way home, Alexandre Beck (François Cluzet) and his wife Margot (Marie-Josée Croze) stop at a lake where they used to play as children. They skinny-dip and make love. Then Margot swims away to take care of their dog, and Alex hears her scream; he tries to help her but is knocked unconscious and back into the water as soon as he steps onto a pier. Flash-forward eight years: Margot is dead, and Alex, a pediatrician, continues his practice in Paris. His work offers some refuge from the void left by his wife’s absence. The casting of Croze, one of the finest Francophone actors around, is crucial to the movie’s success. She registers so strongly in her brief scenes — it doesn’t hurt that she appears naked — that the pain of her loss lingers with you as much as it does with Alex. Then Canet gets the proper action started by tantalizing Alex with the prospect of seeing her again. He gets a mysterious email with a link to a surveillance-type video that appears to show Margot outside a Metro station. She pauses and looks at the camera as if she wants to be seen. Meanwhile, the cops uncover new evidence near the lake that prompts them to reopen the case of Margot’s slaying; her death was tied to a serial killer, but they never quite got over their suspicion that Alex was responsible.

As I recap these plot elements, it hits me: This is pulp! Indeed, “Tell No One” was adapted from an American novel, the sort of trashy quick read you’d pick up in an airport if you were desperate. (A glance at an excerpt from the book reveals that the author, Harlan Coben, is no Dickens; he’s no Daniel Silva or Ken Follett, either.) But as movie lovers know, what matters is not the erudition of the material — “The Godfather” and “Gone With the Wind” were lowbrow titles, too — but the style and the conviction of the moviemaking. And in “Tell No One,” Canet tallies a series of remarkable moments that announce him as an uncommon talent. There’s an extraordinary flashback sequence set to Jeff Buckley’s mournful cover of “Lilac Wine” (”I drink much more than I oughta drink/Because it reminds me of you”) in which Alex, while gulping vodka, remembers both his wedding to Margot and her funeral. Canet captures the elation and anguish on the faces of their friends and family at both events, alternating between the two with a heartbreaking series of dissolves. And he uses pop music beautifully throughout; U2’s “With or Without You” also resonates strongly when it graces the soundtrack. Later, at about the midway point, Canet stages one of the best chase sequences I’ve ever seen. Cluzet’s Alex becomes Cary Grant’s Roger Thornhill ducking the crop-duster in “North by Northwest,” the ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances. Canet is careful not to suggest Alex is any kind of Superman; after a particularly clever maneuver buys him some time, he trips on a curb and takes a nasty spill. Every shot, every detail matters in Canet’s design. He’s great at dropping clues visually, and attention to throaway lines of dialogue is well-rewarded.

If Canet’s moviemaking elevates pulp to art, so do the uniformly committed performances from his cast. Cluzet deservingly won the Cesar as best actor for his anxious and empathetic work as Alex. He clearly never got over the loss of his wife, and Cluzet shows this brittle, remote man becoming reacquainted with anger, panic and exhilaration. Along with Crozee, the supporting cast includes Marina Hinds as Alex’s sister; Kristin Scott Thomas as her partner and Alex’s closest ally; André Dussollier as Margot’s cagey father; Nathalie Baye as Alex’s slick lawyer; François Berléand as a levelheaded detective; and Jean Rochefort as a powerful gentryman. Not a weak link in this bunch, and Canet, an actor-turned-director, gives them humanizing bits that show he sees them as more than just gears in the genre machinery. A key scene between the detective and his tempestuous partner is staged at the home of the detective’s mother, where he’s putting away her groceries.

Special mention goes to Gilles Lelouche, who plays Bruno, a gangster whose hemophiliac son is a patient of Alex’s; Lelouche brings earthy charm and laugh-out-loud incredulity to a central sequence in which he helps Alex out of a tight spot.

“Tell No One,” released in France in November 2006 but just now creeping its way into American arthouses, is easily the best movie I’ve seen this year, because even as the action builds to an almost unbearable intensity, Canet remembers that he’s telling a story of love and loss among ordinary people. It’s grounded in emotion, and it’s immensely satisfying. It will give you happy chills.