El secreto de sus ojos examines a life on hold

Drama, mystery, romance, humor, action, and violence are all present in El secreto de sus ojos (The Secret of Their Eyes), the 2009 Oscar-winning film of Argentine-born director Juan Jose Campanella. But what permeates the 126-minute movie is the underlying sense of something kept in check, something unacknowledged that had nothing to do with the crime serving as the film’s backdrop. The film inaugurated Pelicula, the annual Spanish Film Festival in Manila, which began daily screenings last September 30 and lasts until October 10.

Benjamin Esposito, a recently retired judicial investigator, decides to write a novel about a brutal rape and murder case that he investigated in the past. He shows the tentative drafts to his former superior, a judge named Irene Menendez Hastings. Although not overly enthusiastic about the idea, she contributes an ancient Olivetti which lacks the letter “A". When she asks Benjamin why he decided to write about the case, he replies that he saw himself one night eating all alone, and he did not like himself. It was this image of a solitary old man eating alone that held the imagination of director Juan Jose Campanella when he read the novel on which the film is based. “How does one end up all alone? One can deny it, or forget it, or ignore it for some time, but the past always comes back," Campanella said in an article by Jose Felipe Diez Rioz in Un Mundo de Cine. Throughout the film, Benjamin asks variations of the same questions: “How can everything end up in nothing? How does one manage to live an empty life? How does one learn to live a life full of nothing?" To the character who loses the love of his life, he poses this question: “How did you learn to live without her?" Los ojos – hablan (The eyes – they speak) Benjamín goes back in time to June 1974, shortly after Irene became his boss. He is reluctant to investigate the case, irritated that Romano, a rival investigator, passed it on to them. On the way to the crime scene and still seething from the bureaucratic sleight-of-hand, he is eloquently witty and sarcastic as he talks to a policeman about the different kinds of irritating people (pelotudos) they encounter on the job. As he enters the bedroom, however, the image of the bloodied victim stops him in his tracks. Shocked into silence, he slowly approaches the victim. She is Liliana Colotto, 23, schoolteacher. He looks at her beaten face, struck by her blind stare. A day or so later, Romano informs Benjamin that the Morales case has been solved. Doubtful, Benjamin visits the prisoners - a pair of laborers – and sees that they have been tortured to confess to the crime. Looking for clues about the real perpetrator, Benjamin comes across old photos of Liliana and notices a man in the group photographs staring fixedly at her: Isidoro Gomez. A year later, he runs into Ricardo Morales, the victim’s husband, who is waiting at a train station hoping to waylay Gomez. Morales recounts his last morning with Liliana, wondering if she gave him tea with honey or lemon. “The worst of it all is that I’m beginning to forget. And now, I can’t even be sure if what remains with me is the memory, or just the memory of a memory." But as with Liliana and Gomez, the eyes of Morales hold Benjamin. “You have to see his eyes," he later tells Irene. “Eyes in a state of pure love. Can you imagine a love like that, a love not sullied by the everyday things?" Los intocables, the untouchables In separate interviews with HollywoodChicago.com and The New York Times, both director Campanella and actress Soledad Villamil who plays Irene say the film explore the use of state terror in Argentina even before the 1976 coup that ushered in the military dictatorship. For instance, after Isidoro Gomez is apprehended and sentenced to life in prison, he is seen shortly afterwards in an official news feature standing behind a woman giving a speech. The woman looks like Isabel Peron and Gomez has apparently become one of her bodyguards. Isabel Peron, widow of Juan Peron, was the president of Argentina from July 1974 until March 1976. When Benjamin confronts his rival investigator Romano on how Gomez the prisoner became the presidential bodyguard, Romano says, “He is a man of courage and intelligence. He can break into a house and do what needs to be done. If we relied solely on good people …." He points out that people of Irene’s social standing and reputation are intocables, untouchable. But in the Argentina of El secreto de los ojos, the real untouchables are those who wield brute force, like Gomez. Campanella explained that the government used the “threat" of leftist guerrillas during the administration of Isabel Peron as an excuse to do just about anything. This is one aspect of the movie that needs no explanation for a Filipino audience, particularly those who experienced abuses under the Marcos dictatorship. The memory of a memory El secreto de sus ojos moves slowly as it follows the sequence of Benjamin’s memories of the case, seamlessly moving backward and forward in time the way memories do. But unlike another film about a memory, Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love, the pacing is not dragging. Through a series of quick montages within the first four minutes of the movie, the viewer is presented with the two storylines of the movie: the relationship between Irene and Benjamin, and the resolution of the Morales rape-murder case. To distinguish the past from the present, Benjamin’s memories are presented in vivid color while present-day scenes are in muted tones. But the change in color quality never distracts the viewer and the transition is smooth, unlike other films that struggle with this technique. The pacing picks up with the chase scene, with the camera shots becoming jerky and uneven, similar to the hand-held camera techniques used in the Blair Witch Project. The antics and witticisms of the Benjamin’s alcoholic partner Sandoval – telling a phone caller that he had reached the sperm bank, for instance – provide the audience a respite from the brooding of the lead character and the tension surrounding the case. One weakness of the plot is the interrogation scene where Irene and Benjamin do a version of the good cop-bad cop act to elicit a confession from Gomez. The admission of Gomez in itself does not cover all the elements of the crime and was made without the presence of his own counsel. The unstated love between Benjamin and Irene, in spite of the differences in their positions and social class, is the main undercurrent of the film. Although they get married to other people, their feelings for each other remain alive even after 25 years. Irene even calls Benjamin panfilo – that’s torpe to us Filipinos – for never declaring himself to her. In the end, Benjamin has to decide whether his love would forever remain just a memory. – YA, GMANews.TV El secreto de los ojos is based on the 2005 novel La pregunta de sus ojos (The question in their eyes) by Eduardo Sacheri, who co-wrote the screenplay with director Juan Jose Campanella. The cast includes Ricardo Darin (Benjamin Esposito), Soledad Villamil (Irene Menendez Hastings), Pablo Rago (Ricardo Morales), Javier Godino (Isidoro Gomez), and Guillermo Francella (Pablo Sandoval). The film won the audience choice award in the Spanish film festival in Manila. It will be shown on Sunday, Oct. 10, 9:30 pm at Greenbelt 3.