Review of Tell No One

Tell No One Transcends Its Genre Narrative

Tell No One Transcends Its Genre Narrative 

Tell No One, Guillame Canet's adaptation of American novelist Harlan Coben's drug-store paperback, is a telling example of what Jean-Luc Godard once said in regard to his film Contempt: "The best novels to adapt are not the classics, but the paperbacks to accompany you on a long train ride." Indeed. Tell No One's storyline is that of a typical suspense/neo-noir pic, but Canet's love of stylistic flourish elevates this film above the realm of a simple thriller.

As is typical of most noir films, the plot is long and snaking, and becomes more and more drawn out as we move along. The exposition never really stops. To give you a taste: Margot Beck (Marie-Josee Croze) is murdered by a serial killer in the beginning of the film. Her husband, Doctor Alexander Beck (Francois Cluzet) is knocked unconscious as he runs to try and save her in the field where she's abducted. Eight years later, Beck is still not over his wife's death, and things only become tougher for him when her case is re-opened; perhaps the serial killer her death was pinned upon didn't do it after all. And then the anonymous emails start, directing Beck to a web-surveillance camera for reasons that soon become clear. Margot, it seems, might be alive.

On paper, the plot might come across as a bit unoriginal, a bit tired. But with the beautifully edited, music-based montage sequences and the gracefully swooping camera movements, Tell No One becomes something else entirely; a joy to watch. Stylistic variation on the theme is hardly de rigueur when it comes to this genre, and admittedly it wouldn't take much to make such a pic formally subversive; but Canet's direction makes the movie not only formally subversive, but in fact, beautiful. Right from the start, Canet treats us to some gorgeous camerawork, swinging the camera 360 degrees around the car that our couple is exiting, to go to the picturesque lake where the supposed murder takes place. This style of camerawork never leaves the film for long.

The music montages are different as well; there are sections of the film where Canet cuts together an action sequence without the traditional "thriller" scoring. Instead, he uses music from U2 or Billie Holliday. One isn't quite sure how to react, but one also gets the sense that it this a good thing. What Canet is displaying with all these formal games is not only how far formal experimentation can go in the making of a compelling film, but also how staid the American interpretation of this genre of literature (because it is a literary genre) has become.

While writers like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and David Goodis all did work within the very same realm, narratively, they all had their own styles, their own perspectives upon the world. These perspectives didn't just inform their work; they defined it. Everyone knows that, while Chandler's narratives are interesting, the real brilliance of a Chandler novel is not his progression through a plot, but his tangential, peripheral social commentary on Los Angeles and the world at large. This ability to be tangential has been lost upon the current crop of American neo-noir directors. Canet is well aware of it. --Zachary Wigon

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Posted on 04/27/08 by: ZacharyWigon 01:52 PM