Tell No One

Guillaume Canet’s French adaptation of an American thriller by Harlen Coben plays like an insanely complicated mash-up of Vertigo and The Fugitive, delivered with the blithe incomprehensibility of The Big Sleep. But like the current American remake of the brilliant British miniseries, State of Play, it tries to incorporate just too much conspiracy and mystification into two hours, though with a cast that makes it well worth watching. How can you quibble with a film that deploys such Francophone pulchritude as Marie-Josee Croze, Kristin Scott Thomas, Marina Hinds, and Nathalie Baye? There’s a pleasing array of male character actors as well, led by Francois Cluzet looking a lot like Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man. He’s a pediatrician still mourning the murder of his wife eight years previous, a case in which he was the prime suspect, and is again now that two more bodies have been unearthed. This film makes no concession to an audience’s desire to figure out what the hell is going on, but if you stick with it, a lot of kinetic energy covers the implausible gaps in the story. It’s the classic Hitchcock situation of someone pursuing the evildoers while being pursued by the police himself. And while it has a ton of ’splainin’ to do in the final reel, it doesn’t feel like a complete cheat. Generally I look for a French film to do more than out-Hollywood Hollywood, but the result here is fairly satisfying. (2008, dvd, n.) *7-* (MC-82.)