Secret défense

Screening on Film

Directed by Jacques Rivette.
With Sandrine Bonnaire, Jerzy Radziwilowicz, Grégoire Colin.
France, 1998, 35mm, color, 170 min.
French with English subtitles.

Jacques Rivette has continued to reinvent and extend the medium in such recent films as Va savoir and Haut bas fragile. Between these two films is the lesser known Secret Defense, an icy murder thriller and contemporary version of the Electra myth. In a performance of considerable intensity, Sandrine Bonnaire stars as a research scientist who seeks revenge on the industrialist she believes has killed her father. The taut psychological suspense is heightened as the twists and turns of plot are echoed in a constant maze of trains, bicycles, and pedestrians. But it is in the interstices between actionsspaces—areas which often hold the utmost fascination for Rivette—that Secret Defense tells its real story.