Tell No One movie review & film summary (2008)

Flash-forward eight years. Alex is a pediatrician in a Paris hospital. He has never remarried and still longs for Margot. Two bodies are found buried in the forest where it is believed she was murdered, and the investigation is reopened. Although Margot's case was believed solved, suspicion of Alex has never entirely died out. He was hit so hard before falling back into the water that he was in a coma for three days. How did he get back on the dock?

Now the stage is set for a dilemma that resembles in some ways "The Fugitive." Evidence is found that incriminates Alex: a murder weapon, for example, in his apartment. There is the lockbox that contains suspicious photographs and a shotgun tied to another murder. Alex is tipped off by his attorney (Nathalie Baye) and flees out the window of his office at the hospital just before the cops arrive. "You realize he just signed his own confession?" a cop says to the lawyer.

Alex is in very good shape. He runs and runs, pursued by the police. It is a wonderfully photographed chase, including a dance across both lanes of an expressway. His path takes him through Clignancourt, the labyrinthine antiques market and into the mean streets on the other side. He shares a Dumpster with a rat. He is helped by a crook he once did a favor for; the crook has friends who seem to be omnipresent.

Ah, but already I've left out a multitude of developments. Alex has been electrified by cryptic e-mail messages that could only come from Margot. Is she still alive? He needs to elude the cops long enough to make a rendezvous in a park. And still I've left out so much -- but I wouldn't want to reveal a single detail that would spoil the mystery.

"Tell No One" was directed and co-scripted by Guillaume Canet, working with Harlan Coben, the American author of the novel which inspired it. It contains a rich population of characters, but has been so carefully cast that we're never confused. There are: Alex's sister (Marina Hands); her lesbian lover (Kristin Scott Thomas); the rich senator, whose obsession is race horses (Jean Rochefort); Margot's father (Andre Dussollier); the police captain who alone believes Alex is innocent (Francois Berleand); the helpful crook (Gilles Lellouche), and the senator's son (Guillaume Canet himself). Also a soft-porn fashion photographer, a band of vicious assassins, street thugs, and on and on. And the movie gives full weight to these characters; they are necessary and handled with care.

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