Remember the French guy Etienne from Danny Boyle’s ‘The Beach’? No? Nor me, but he (Guillaume Canet) has just made his second film and it’s called ‘Tell No One’, or ‘Ne le Dis a Personne’ if you’re feeling Gallic. Originally a novel by Harlan Coben set in and around New York State, Canet has skilfully transplanted the action to Paris and the surrounding countryside.

The film centres around Alex Beck (Francois Cluzet), a paediatrician who is clearly very much in love with his wife, and childhood sweetheart, Margot (Marie-Josee Croze). One evening after visiting friends outside Paris, they stop for a swim at a lake they have been going to since they were kids. After a disagreement Margot swims off to return to their car, and when Alex follows, he is knocked out by an unseen assailant. When he regains consciousness he finds out his wife has been brutally murdered.

Fast-forward 8 years, and out of the blue Alex receives an e-mail that appears to be from his dead wife, whilst almost simultaneously the police discover two bodies near her murder site prompting them to re-open the investigation into her death. I can’t really give too much else away, but what I can tell you is that Alex becomes the prime suspect in the investigation, and he is forced into a race against time to discover what really happened all those years ago.

I’d heard a lot of good things about ‘Tell No One’, and I did enjoy it, but it has also left me with mixed feelings. At times it plays the European thriller card brilliantly. It is well paced, is tense in all the right places, and there are some really strong performances. Cluzet is excellent as the doctor whose anguish and desperation are palpable as he descends further into the mystery surrounding his wife’s death. And Kristin Scott Thomas is a bit of a surprise package as the lesbian lover of Alex’s sister, particularly as she performs entirely in French. Oh, and it’s got a superb chase scene through the streets of Paris that’s almost as good at Reeve’s and Swayze’s in ‘Point Break’.

But, and it’s quite a large but, the plot does seem to have a couple of pretty large holes in it, and I feel that the makers missed a trick by never really putting Alex’s innocence into doubt. I also had a bit of a problem with the film’s conclusion in that I didn’t feel that the reveal really warranted such a complicated conceit.

That being said, it’s definitely worth a seeing, especially in light of what else is on at the flicks at the moment, and I think it’s fair to say that Canet will be a more memorable director than he ever was an actor. Sept de dix.

Ferg