The French Connection

Tell No One
Directed by Guillaume Canet. Starring: Francois Cluzet, Francois Berleand, Kristin Scott-Thomas, Andre Dussollier, Marina Hands, Jean Rochefort, Marie-Josee Croze, Nathalie Baye and Guillaume Canet. 125 min. Rating N/A.

Live and Become
Directed by Radu Mihaileanu. Starring: Moshe Agazai, Moshe Abebe, Sirak M. Sabahat, Yaël Abecassis, Roschdy Zem and Roni Hadar. 140 min. Rating N/A.


It’s a good week for the French, with two new films arriving stateside, each excellent but nothing alike. First up, we have Tell No One, a top-drawer thriller from young French actor/writer/director Guillaume Canet (who received the Best Director Award for the film in the French equivalent of the Oscars). Like most French thrillers, it shows the influence of Hitchcock — or, at least, Hitchcock by way of Claude Chabrol. It is also occasionally reminiscent of John Schlesinger’s Marathon Man, largely (though not entirely) because star Francois Cluzet (Round Midnight, plus several Chabrol films) so strikingly resembles the young Dustin Hoffman.

In the opening scenes, we meet pediatrician Alexandre Beck and his wife Margot (Marie-Josee Croze), who have been madly in love since childhood. But we barely get a chance to know Margot when she is killed by two unknown attackers, who whomp Alex upside the head before he can get a look at them.

Seven minutes into the film, we jump ahead eight years. Alex has never emotionally recovered from that horrible night, nor from the gendarmerie’s insinuations at the time that he himself was behind Margot’s murder.

The past is literally dug up again, when two eight-year-dead bodies are found buried near the scene of the crime. One of them has an item belonging to Margot. While this would seem to exculpate Alex, it only raises suspicions anew, to Alex’s annoyance. But then he is metaphorically whomped upside the head again, this time by an anonymous e-mail.

“Tell no one,” the e-mail says. “They’re watching.” And one click away, Alex finds himself looking at recent surveillance camera footage of a woman who appears to be Margot.

Of course, he wants to believe that she is alive. But how? Her father positively identified her body. And where? And, if so, why is she only now contacting him? As he tries to unravel this mystery, he uncovers more and more about Margot that he never knew, despite their lifelong relationship — and some of it doesn’t seem very savory.

The police are following parallel lines of investigation, still operating from the assumption that everything will eventually lead to Alex as the culprit. And when one of other involved parties turns up dead from a fatal bullet from Alex’s gun, our hero is — in the manner of innumerable Hitchcock characters — on the run, trying desperately to prove his innocence.

One of the advantages of foreign films is they are generally less bound by genre convention than their Hollywood counterparts. That is, if Tell No One were remade with, say, Brad and Angelina, would there be any chance whatever that Brad would take the fall? Or that Angelina would turn out to be dead after all? But foreign films are not so necessarily rosy — which keeps the possibilities more open-ended. (For the perfect example, compare George Sluizer’s American remake of The Vanishing with his Dutch original.)

Not that I’m going to give anything away.

If there is a problem with Tell No One, it is that the plot becomes so complicated that, three days after viewing it, I’m already confused about which murder eight years ago was pinned on a random serial killer, or exactly who hired whom for some of the mayhem. I think it all ends up making sense, but I wouldn’t swear to it.

Director Canet started as an actor — he has a small, but crucial, role here — and draws excellent performances from all involved. I’m not always a fan of Kristin Scott-Thomas, but she is in great form as Alex’s sister’s lover. (She also apparently speaks French like a native.) As the chief investigator, Francois Berleand is more memorable than he was in a similar role in the Transporter movies. But it is Cluzet who is onscreen nearly nonstop, and he carries the whole affair perfectly.

Opening this week is another French film — or, to be more precise, a French/Israeli/Italian/ Belgian co-production ... mostly set in Israel and Ethiopia ... from a Romanian filmmaker ... who works in France. Live and Become is the first fictional film I’m aware of to deal with the issue of Ethiopian Jews and their relationship to Israel.

There have been accusations at times that Israel was founded for the benefit of Ashkenazi Jews (from most of Europe) with less regard for Iberian Sephardim and even less for Ethiopia’s black Jews. It was not until 1975 that Israel officially and unambiguously accepted the legitimacy of the latter group; and in the mid-’80s, Israel began a secret mission to rescue Ethiopian Jews from their famine-ridden country.

Live and Become, while largely a drama, has a plot setup with one foot in farce. An Ethiopian Jew and her son are scheduled to be taken to Israel, but, hours before, the boy dies. A non-Jewish friend arranges for her son to take his place. The boy, of course, doesn’t want to leave, but his mother knows it is the best chance for his survival. On the trip, his surrogate mother teaches him to say he is named Schlomo, son of Jakov. Unfortunately, she dies not long after their arrival, and Schlomo (Moshe Agazai) — now doubly abandoned — is adopted by a middle-class, left-wing couple, Yaël (Yaël Abecassis) and Yoram (Roschdy Zem).

In addition to being the only black kid within sight, he also has to deal with faking his knowledge of Judaism, a tough chore for a 9-year-old, no matter how smart. Inwardly, he is constantly torn between homesickness for Africa and his desire to somehow become “a real Jew.” And the atmosphere is charged with racism. His schoolmates’ parents want him transferred to another school; and Orthodox religious officials schedule him for an interview that turns out to be an excuse for an unnecessary “conversion” ritual, including a symbolic circumcision (drawing blood with a jab to the penis of those already circumcised).

A little less than halfway through the film, we skip forward four years, to see Schlomo (now played by Moshe Abebe) as a young teenager; 40 minutes later, we leap ahead to Schlomo (now Sirak M. Sabahat) as a young adult, dealing with romance and career issues. He is having a typical transitional identity crisis, but it is compounded by the never-ending identity crisis of his situation, as he keeps his original deceit a secret from his parents and his fianceé.

At nearly two and a half hours, Radu Mihaileanu’s film is unnecessarily long; a few incidents could have easily been cut. But it is still worth the time. It manages to be, at times, heartwarming, tragic and funny. And it casts a light on an ethnic identity issue that, while very specific, is certainly not without relevance to other groups around the world.