Secret défense (1998) - film review

Sylvie, a young biologist, receives an impromptu visit from her brother who claims to have proof that their father was murdered by Walser, his right-hand man.  Shaken, Sylvie pays a visit to Walser, now head of the company formerly belonging to her father, but he refuses to discuss the matter.  Aware that her brother his planning to have his revenge, Sylvie acquires a gun and goes to Walser’s country house one evening.  In a heated confrontation, the gun goes off accidentally, killing a young woman who was Walser’s secretary and lover.  Walser’s reaction to the death appears inexplicable, until Sylvia finally discovers Walser’s motivation for killing her father...

Secret défense is a clever psychological thriller that plays unceasingly on the subjectivity of good and evil – the notion that the same act can be seen from two diametrically opposing perpectives, with our own prejudice tilting the scales so that we are led to the wrong conclusion.

A suspicion of guilt becomes magnified very quickly into an unshakable certainty in Sylvie’s mind when she witnesses Welser’s reaction when she accidentally kills his lover.  Thereafter, an act of apparent kindness is interpreted as deriving from very sinister motives and Welser is immediately transformed into a dangerous, callous villain.

This is a film that succeeds because it manages  so well to get into the minds of its protagonists, particularly the troubled Sylvie, played brilliantly and with great sensitivity by Sandrine Bonnaire.

The most striking aspect of the film is the constant sense of motion – by train, bike, bus, on foot.  This conveys an impression of paths converging and diverging, mirroring the twists and turns in the plot and reinforcing Sylvie’s disturbed state of mind.  The camera work and lighting, and particularly the use of so many night scenes, create a palpable sense of menace, making incidental music superfluous.

It is pretty rare that one comes across a genuinely impressive film in the série noire genre, but in this film veteran film-maker Jacques Rivette comes very close to achieving just that.

© James Travers 2000

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Jacques Rivette is well-known for his tendency to make movies of long duration. Secret Defense, however, is one of his shorter films (notwithstanding its 170 minutes).  It is a tight suspense thriller, with few violent scenes.  Tension is subtly created with the camera moving very slowly, in semicircles, to and fro, as if trying to spy on the characters’ gestures and words, or, sometimes, stopping to let characters go away, as if refusing to know what they will do next.  Sparse dialogue and long pauses work together with a similar effect.  Except for the Renaissance melodies in the credits, no incidental music accompanies the film.  On the other hand, unusual emphasis is given to sounds like those of the protagonists’ footsteps, telephones ringing, noises of trains, cars, motorcycles, etc.  Prolonged silence help to increase the dense atmosphere and the sense of mystery.  The repeated walking around of the main protagonist (Sandrine Bonnaire) is ironically pointed out by Walser (Jerzy Radziwilovicz), the suspected criminal, in one scene (perhaps a humorous statement by Rivette about his own devices).  Considered by some critics as a free version of Electra’s tragedy, one of the big differences is that in this film two of the crimes are accidental, and the victims are the wrong target.  Rivette’s love of theatre is evident in the arrangement of the last scene.  Sometimes, a slow-paced, long film can result in pleasure, not ennui.
Adam Gai 

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