Review: Tell No One

The premise of “Tell No One” sounds like it wouldn’t be out of place in either an M. Night Shyamalan film or a teen slasher flick: While out skinny dipping one night, a man’s wife is dragged into the woods, screaming. As he tries to climb out of the water, the husband is attacked and left for dead. Eight years later, he starts to receive emails from his (presumably) deceased wife. And that’s just the beginning.

A film like this is difficult to review at best, impossible at worst, in no small part due to the fact that its plot has twists within twists on top of more twists, not to mention a strange habit of doubling things (which I’ll expand on later) that leaves you wondering at times just what is going on. Despite this, I’ll try to explain it as best I can without spoiling too much. After the unfortunate demise of his wife Margot (Marie-Josée Croze, who also starred in last year’s “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”), Alex (François Cluzet) spends his time working as a pediatrician and trying to forget about all that happened. However, he goes to see his in-laws on the anniversary of his wife’s death every year. On the eighth anniversary, he receives an email from Margot, with a link to a world webcam that shows her alive and well.

Alex begins to question whether she is dead, or if something else is at work. This proves to be a terrible move, as the police were never entirely convinced of his innocence (If he was knocked into a lake, how and why was he found comatose on a pier?) and begin to consider whether the case might have to be reopened. When a trail of bodies starts piling up as the result (direct and indirect) of this email, all signs point to Alex, forcing him to go on the run; both figuratively and literally, as one of the film’s high points is a heart-stopping chase on foot across a crowded highway and through a city. Special note must be made of Cluzet’s performance, which he knocks out of the park in a film that would have lived or died by him; no other character has anywhere close to as much screen time.

As the tale unspools, subplots appear by the gross, involving pedophilia, a trio of torture-happy mercenaries and a street thug who takes Alex in at a pivotal moment to repay him for saving his son’s life years before. There is also the matter of doubling that I mentioned earlier, and by that I mean that many of the characters have similar names, appearances or storylines connected to them that directly reflect another. One major character is referred to under multiple pseudonyms throughout the film, and if this wasn’t hard enough to follow, the film is also in French, with English subtitles. Don’t let this minor quibble or the language barrier dissuade you, though; “Tell No One” is a nail-biting thriller of the highest order.