Film Review: THE SECRETS WE KEEP (2020): Revisiting a Past Trauma Leaves Lethal Scars

The Secrets We Keep Review

The Secrets We Keep (2020) Film Review, a movie directed by Yuval Adler, and starring Noomi Rapace, Joel Kinnaman, Chris Messina, Jackson Dean Vincent, Amy Seimetz, Miluette Nalin and Madison Paige Jones.

The Secrets We Keep, directed by Yuval Adler, is one of those films that builds great expectations. Every moment of watching the film, a viewer expects a strange twist that never comes. And when it all ends fairly predictably, you wonder what the point of it all was. But thankfully, you don’t end up regretting watching the film.

Maja (Noomi Rapace) and her doctor husband, Lewis (Chris Messina), are building a life in post-World War II America. The opening scene, where Maja’s son Patrick (Jackson Dean Vincent) is blowing huge soap bubbles in the air in a park, is a lyrical one. A bubble bursts and the viewer is brought crashing down to reality, so to say. Maja spots someone, is visibly disturbed and all hell breaks loose.

Maja eventually kidnaps this man after trying to kill him but failing to pull the trigger. We find out that she was part of a roaming group in Romania during the war. Maja and her sister Miriah (Miluette Nalin) had been sexually assaulted by a group of German soldiers. Maja alleges that the man she has kidnapped, Thomas (Joel Kinnaman), was one of them.

Even though later scenes between Maja and Thomas’s wife, Rachel (Amy Seimetz) are poignant, there is hardly any progression in the storyline from this point on. We see the black and white flashback of that awful night in Maja’s life again and again, with growing degrees of clarity. We also see repeated attempts on Maja’s part to make the prisoner talk, to make him confess his crime. But even though the scenes are beautifully executed, one can’t help but feel that the story drags. You don’t want to stop watching but you get impatient for new reveals that never come.

One of the most touching scenes in this film that is awash with touching scenes is when Maja and Lewis have a conversation near the chicken coop. Maja is inside, cleaning up, while Lewis stands outside. And they have a conversation across the wire mesh. After having kept a secret from her husband throughout the length of their marriage, Maja seems to arrive at a new understanding with Lewis.

What the film also handles very well is the issue of trust in a marriage. Maja apparently has a happy marriage with Lewis. And yet, till she kidnaps their neighbor, Lewis had not really known who she was. And Lewis is caught between wanting to believe his wife and wanting to do the right thing and set the prisoner free.

But Maja is not the only one who hugs her secrets close to her heart. Thomas has also kept his true identity a secret from his wife, Rachel, and his marriage to her is basically built on a lie. He pretends he is Jewish when he is, in fact, not. He is a lot of other things too. But thankfully, his wife never finds out.

Between the dressing styles, the car models and the patina of age that every shot carefully maintains, the film successfully recreates the target era of post-World War II America. The final scene where Maja, resplendent in a red outfit, and Lewis show up at a public event, putting up a united front in spite of their recent tragic circumstances, is a memorable one.

What The Secrets We Keep does very well is remind us that one can put a lot of time and distance between oneself and a past trauma but it never really sets a person free. If anything, the trauma returns to haunt someone when they least expect it, after having spent years to rebuild their lives. The pain just lives on.

Rating: 6/10

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