Review: Every Secret Thing
The
story of Ronnie and Alice, who as girls were not the best of friends, but
overweight Alice’s mother (Diane Lane) pretty much forced Alice to include
Ronnie (who comes from a not great home life) in everything. Ronnie’s shy and a
little weird, whilst Alice is jealous, spiteful, and needy. When they were both
11, Ronnie and Alice get convicted of killing a biracial baby and sent to
juvenile detention. At age 18 they are released from juvey, Alice (Danielle
MacDonald) and Ronnie (Dakota Fanning) aren’t finding an easy time of it
re-integrating into society, and it’s clear that Alice’s mother still very much
favours Ronnie over her own daughter. Alice and Ronnie also blame one another
for what happened to the baby when they were 11. When another young biracial
child goes missing from a local furniture store, police detectives Elizabeth
Banks (who still hasn’t recovered from discovering the dead girl’s body in the
earlier case) and Nate Parker come into town naturally turn to Alice and Ronnie
(who haven’t really interacted with each other in years) as probable suspects.
Common turns up as the stepfather of the missing child.
Sharing
a little in common (both good and bad) with the frustrating Aussie drama “I
Am You”, is this much better but flawed 2015 crime/drama flick. Directed by
debut feature director Amy Berg (formerly a documentarian who made the
thematically similar “West of Memphis”) and scripted by Nicole
Holofcener (writer-director of “Friends With Money” and “Enough Said”),
the adaptation of the Laura Lippman novel has enough going for it to be
recommended, and I’m a bit surprised it bypassed cinemas here in Australia.
Perhaps Elizabeth Banks, Diane Lane, and Dakota Fanning aren’t A-grade
celebrity actresses, but they’d surely rank as B+ one would think.
The
plot resembles a mixture of “I Am You” and the real-life Jamie Bulger
murder case (even Peter Jackson’s “Heavenly Creatures”), so one should
expect a fairly heavy-going, mature story on show here. The worldview we get
here is kind of a similarly white trash view as seen in “Gone Baby Gone”
but a different state in America. It’s really well-conveyed, and Diane Lane is
particularly excellent in a somewhat against-type casting decision. I think the
film is a little rougher on her character than I feel like being, but there’s
no doubt that this is your typical mother who is hard on her own kid who is
troubled and frumpy, whilst clearly favouring someone else’s child who is
everything she wishes her own daughter would be. Whether Lane’s daughter is the
way she is partly due to parental neglect or whether Lane is perhaps justified
in being aloof towards her own daughter, is left somewhat ambiguous I think,
and really interesting. However, there’s no doubt that this woman is absolutely
not mother of the year material at all. It’s a really interesting character and
Lane, although not the first person I’d think of to play a white trash mother,
is terrific in the part.
Although
her domestic scenes are a cliché, Elizabeth Banks is fairly solid, if
unspectacular in a dramatic part. She’s fine, but the role doesn’t give her
nearly as much to chew on as others in the cast are afforded with their
characters. Her character also seems a bit thick, as she asks one of the supposed
killers about the initial crime. What? Can’t you just get court transcripts or
police interview transcripts from the time? That seemed really weird and
unconvincing to me, through no fault of Banks’. Dakota Fanning, meanwhile is
good in a very sad, affecting role. Rapper Common capably eschews his usual
cool as ice persona to play much lower class here in a small role. You might
not even recognise him sporting cornrows.
Unfortunately,
the film comes saddled with two less persuasive performances. Nate Parker
overplays it a bit as Banks’ partner who takes a disliking to his much
lower-class equivalent in Common. It’s a clichéd role and I think Parker gives
it just a tad too much juice to where he seems a bit unhinged. The bigger
issue, though, is young Danielle MacDonald as the older incarnation of Lane’s
chubby, sullen daughter. Although she’s not nearly as unrestrained as Ruth
Bradley in “I Am You”, I think (a lot) less would’ve been so much more.
Having said that, you do still feel sorry for her character in a pathetic kind
of way. Put aside for a second what the girl may or may not have done, and
you’ve still got a kid with low self-esteem being overlooked by her own damn
mother. At least from MacDonald’s point of view, it seems like an act of cruelty
on her mother’s behalf.
A
good movie with an interesting crime/mystery plot, it would’ve been even better
without a couple of unsubtle performances. Worth seeing for the basic story and
an excellent turn by Diane Lane. It’s one of those films that will have you
talking and debating with people afterwards. It’ll probably rile you up a bit
at times, too with some of the behaviour on display by young and old. Worth
seeking out.
Rating:
B-
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