The Secret

The great Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, various French Film Fest offerings over the years) plays a man in 1985 piecing his family history together: In postwar Paris, he was the meek and sickly son of a champion swimmer (Cécile De France) and an ardent gymnast (Patrick Bruel), feeling out of place in what he then considered an idyllic family—until a family friend (Julie Depardieu) revealed some presumed-unmentionable details about what went down during the Nazi occupation. But now this feels like a fairly conventional story, but director Claude Miller nonetheless adapts Philippe Grimbert’s autobiographical novel with empathy and precision, and his actors perform gracefully.