Film

Its generic title and inconsistent director (The Little Thief) notwithstanding, A Secret proceeds to tell its complicated story with uncommon subtlety. (This is one case where a jumbled chronology actually serves the theme of a film.) What’s clear from the outset is that the movie concerns a French family, shown mainly in the ’50s and ’60s, who have chosen to repress their Jewish identity. Early on, young François (played at various ages by Vigourt, Dubuis and Amalric) is warned not to tell his grandfather that his parents had him baptized; it’s understood that passing as Gentiles has helped them in the past.

It’s true that the secret at the core of A Secret comes as more of a shock to François than to the audience. But the film, based on Philippe Grimbert’s autobiographically inspired novel, is an interesting attempt to deal with the Holocaust obliquely: This is a case of survivor’s guilt subsumed so deeply that it’s been banished from the family discourse. Although François is nominally the protagonist, A Secret lingers in the mind because it’s fundamentally the story of a set of shadow characters, lost to the camps. In a sense, François owes them his life, but the rules laid out by his parents ensure that these individuals remain unmentioned.