In Secret is a very faithful adaptation of the Zola novel, Therese Raquin, not just in plot, characters and theme, but in the overwhelming sense of darkness in and out and in the intense sexuality that doesn’t depend on nudity. The butcher scene particularly catches the harshness of 19th Century naturalism.
Perhaps the core of the film is the vapid husband Camille’s story of he zoo. Exhausted after a day’s work in his clerical cage he drifts to the zoo, where he watches the animals in their cages. One bear is maddened when a slice of honeyed bread lands on his back. His raging appetite for it leaves him having clawed his flesh raw.
The orphaned Therese is abandoned to an uncaring aunt who forces her to marry her ailing, dependent son. When Therese steps out of her wire petticoat she steps out of another literal cage into the metaphoric cage of her loveless marriage. Zola’s — and the film’s — point is that rather than escape our cages we only step from one into another. When Laurent frees Therese’s sexuality that becomes a cage that ensnares both. When they resolve to kill Camille so they can be together the shock and guilt prove a harsher, more debilitating cage than her marriage was. Laurent’s financial needs and Therese’s dependency are a further trap. When they finally wed — again at the manipulated aunt’s behest — there is no more love between them, just guilt and resentment. After a stroke Therese’s aunt is all rage trapped in a crippled body, until she manages to write her accusation of their guilt with her cane in ink on the floor. By then Laurent and Therese are eager to be discovered, arrested, guillotined, if only to escape their guilt. The law retarded, they take the aunt to the water’s edge for an ostensible picnic and kill themselves.
This is not a feel good flick, so it hasn’t been scoring with the reviewers and audiences. Its warning against the unrestrained drive to satisfaction is hardly in keeping with the temper of our times. But it’s a well done reminder of a great novelist’s vision with a tone and message that are healthily disturbing.
The orphaned Therese is abandoned to an uncaring aunt who forces her to marry her ailing, dependent son. When Therese steps out of her wire petticoat she steps out of another literal cage into the metaphoric cage of her loveless marriage. Zola’s — and the film’s — point is that rather than escape our cages we only step from one into another. When Laurent frees Therese’s sexuality that becomes a cage that ensnares both. When they resolve to kill Camille so they can be together the shock and guilt prove a harsher, more debilitating cage than her marriage was. Laurent’s financial needs and Therese’s dependency are a further trap. When they finally wed — again at the manipulated aunt’s behest — there is no more love between them, just guilt and resentment. After a stroke Therese’s aunt is all rage trapped in a crippled body, until she manages to write her accusation of their guilt with her cane in ink on the floor. By then Laurent and Therese are eager to be discovered, arrested, guillotined, if only to escape their guilt. The law retarded, they take the aunt to the water’s edge for an ostensible picnic and kill themselves.
This is not a feel good flick, so it hasn’t been scoring with the reviewers and audiences. Its warning against the unrestrained drive to satisfaction is hardly in keeping with the temper of our times. But it’s a well done reminder of a great novelist’s vision with a tone and message that are healthily disturbing.
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