In Secret (**3/4)

The corrosive effect of guilt and deceit is the eventual theme of this drama that takes half the film’s length to ripen. Based on Émile Zola’s frequently adapted 1867 novel Thérèse Raquin, it’s more specifically adapted from Neal Bell’s English-language play by that title. It nonetheless retains the French setting (and some of the play-like feel). It mostly dispenses with the part of the story in which Thérèse (Elizabeth Olsen), deposited with her aunt (Jessica Lange) by her widowed father, grows up with her country cousin Camille (Tom Felton). Instead, it skips right ahead to where Thérèse, under pressure from her aunt, agrees to marry Camille and move to Paris, which is made to seem dank rather than glamourous.

While chugging through a lot of story, director Charlie Stratton establishes the characters  by reducing them to their main traits: controlling (Mrs. Raquin), sickly (Camille, coughing a lot), lusty (Thérèse, moaning a lot). The minimal back story hurts; one understands rather than truly feels Thérèse’s discontent with her harmless-seeming spouse. Even before Camille’s virile, artistic friend Laurent (Oscar Isaac) shows up, it’s clear the marriage will not be joyous, and the early Paris scenes are most noteworthy for the opportunity to watch Inside Llewyn Davis’s Isaac with large sideburns and an English accent. (Except for Felton, the main characters are played by Americans, but all employ English accents to portray French people) There are some love scenes, but they’re pretty standard “torrid affair” stuff.

All of the above seems like a wind-up to the far darker second half. Here especially, Lange, as a manipulative woman who suffers perhaps too much for her faults, shines in a supporting role. Or perhaps she just has the most complex character.

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viewed 2/26/14 7:10 pm and posted 3/4/14