The Secret in Their Eyes

Directed by Juan José Campanella

(R)

***

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The Secret in Their Eyes “successfully combines the utmost in romanticism with the utmost in realism,” said David Denby in The New Yorker. Made in Argentina, the winner of this year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film is a “genre-busting movie”—at once a crime story and a love story. A retired court investigator (Ricardo Darín) decides to write a novel based on an old murder case. His pursuit leads him to the offices of a former colleague (Soledad Villamil), whom he has always secretly loved. Thus a crime from years ago becomes a “springboard for ruminations on love and memory, on the nature of time and the value of life,” said Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle. The two-track narrative moves back and forth between modern-day Buenos Aires and that of 1974, and at times director Juan José Campanella’s labyrinthine style can be frustrating, eschewing logic for flash. Yet the film is “large enough in scope to transcend these minor flaws,” said Dana Stevens in Slate.com. This richly imagined, finely wrought picture will leave you feeling pleasantly baffled for hours afterward.