El secreto de sus ojos (Juan José Campanella, 2009)

Part thriller, part wistful drama, the Argentine The Secret in Their Eyes rather defies tidy classification, and is all the more rewarding for that. It revolves around a retired justice department agent who is still haunted by a murder case from 25 years back which was never properly resolved, and similarly by an unrequited attraction to his department chief from the same time. The jumping back and forth between then and now is nothing new, but works unobtrusively enough, without undue gimmickry, and the film likewise has enough confidence in its characters to avoid resorting to plot trickery or histrionics. The dialogue bristles with nous and while the need of the protagonists for closure is palpable, this is also unsentimentalised. In truth, it's not distinctive enough to have garnered quite all the plaudits it did, including the year's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, but it is a gratifyingly mature piece nevertheless.

7/10