In Secret
Thérèse (Elizabeth Olsen: Very Good Girls) had a tough childhood. Abandoned at her aunt’s home by her father, Thérèse was raised with her sickly cousin Camille (Tom Felton: From the Rough). Trained by her Aunt Raquin (Jessica Lange: American Horror Story) to be a nursemaid to spoiled rotten Camille, Thérèse escapes to dreams of Paris.
When Camille decides he’s of an age to move to Paris and make a living like a grownup, Madame Raquin forces Thérèse to marry him. Her ploy not only keeps the family together but also ensures Camille’s inheritance of Thérèse’s secret fortune. Thérèse isn’t thrilled, but she’s an illegitimate daughter with no education. Her options are marriage or the streets.
Just as Thérèse has resigned herself to a loveless and sexless marriage, she meets Laurent (Oscar Isaac: Inside Llewyn Davis), Camille’s artist coworker. The two begin a torrid affair. Life would be perfect if they could openly be together.
Camille has to go. They plot his demise between trysts, but when it comes to the deed, they are infirm of purpose.
Based on Emile Zola’s classic novel Thérèse Raquin, In Secret shares the original’s fascination with sex, guilt and obsession. Unfortunately, director Charlie Stratton (Revenge) is not Zola. Unlike Zola’s novel, which maps out themes of repression, sexual awakening and guilt, Stratton jumps from sex scenes to overwrought dramatic monologues. We don’t have time to develop sympathies, so it’s a long march through the plot.
As the tragic lovers, Olsen and Isaac are oddly cast. Though they have decent chemistry, their acting styles clash with the story. They’re too loud and expressive for repressive 1867 France, where a woman’s transgressions could ruin her. Olsen seems especially lost, vacillating from vacancy to histrionics. Isaac is a charming seducer, but he can’t mine much substance from this shallowly written character.
Lange makes the most of her underwritten role by gracefully chewing the scenery as Thérèse’s controlling aunt. She has recently reinvented herself as a Bette Davis-style crone, reveling in the grotesque. Here, she dials back the performance, portraying Aunt Raquin as a well-meaning woman who is so blinded by her devotion to a sick child that she neglects the other child in her care.
In Secret does have a few good moments, especially when Stratton plays with the guilty couple’s minds. He also invites us to watch very pretty people having sex in beautifully lit montages.