Set in the lower echelons of 1860s Paris, Therese Raquin, a sexually repressed beautiful young woman, is trapped into a loveless marriage to her sickly cousin, Camille, by her domineering aunt, Madame Raquin. Therese spends her days confined behind the counter of a small shop and her evenings watching Madame play dominoes with an eclectic group. After she meets her husband';s alluring friend, Laurent, she embarks on an illicit affair that leads to tragic consequences.
Lange at least has an angle on her character; the rest of the cast simply hit their marks and spout dialogue like robots, delivering lines which should evoke erotic fervour, but are exchanged without urgency, conviction or belief.
For those who want sweeping, "In Secret" offers all the essentials - unbridled passion, deceit, fate so unkind, a classically creepy mother and grand tragedy.
No knocks to Emile Zola -- who wrote the 1867 French novel which serves as In Secret's source material -- but the story is stretched excruciatingly thin in this adaptation.
Isaac is better in his early scenes as a seducer, Olsen is better in her bitter, angry later scenes, but they synch up by the film's over-the-top last moments.
Olsen and Isaac never really create the kind of amour fou that a story like this depends on, let alone the self-loathing guilt that their crime is supposed to engender.
Observer (UK)
May 18, 2014
Notable largely for the anguished, nuanced performance of Jessica Lange ...
Olsen is one of Hollywood's best young actresses. There is nothing she can't do. In the long run, it's the men who'll wish they'd done more to support her suffocating sense of loneliness here.
It's most remarkable as a pairing of two inspired actresses with four decades separating them: 25-year-old Elizabeth Olsen, the bewitching star of Martha Marcy May Marlene, and 64-year-old Jessica Lange.
