The Secrets We Keep

As soon as I saw the trailer for The Secrets We Keep I immediately wanted to see it because I have a fascination with movies involving World War II intrigue.  I saw it last night and, unfortunately, it was a bit disappointing.  Maja (Noomi Rapace), a Romanian woman living in a small suburban town in the U.S., is attempting to rebuild her life after World War II with her American husband Lewis (Chris Messina) and her young son Patrick (Jackson Vincent).  While at a park with her son, she hears a distinctive whistle which triggers a flashback to the war when she and her sister were brutally raped and her sister was killed by Nazis.  She follows the man who whistled home and, when she sees his face, she is convinced that he is the man who tortured her and contrives to kidnap him.  She intends to kill him but can't bring herself to do it so she ties him up in her basement.  Lewis, who knows nothing about his wife's past, is horrified when he hears her story and discovers what she has done but ultimately becomes her accomplice.  The man (Joel Kinnaman) professes to be a Swiss citizen who spent the war as a clerk in Zurich but Lewis doesn't know what to believe because some aspects of the man's story check out and his wife has a history of unstable behavior.  It is a tense, if sometimes improbable (the scene where the sheriff investigates the missing person's report and is oblivious to a myriad of clues in their living room had me shaking my head), psychological thriller focused on the secrets between more than one husband and wife with a stellar performance by Rapace and an atmospheric 1950s vibe created with credible production design and costumes.  However, I found the morally ambiguous ending to be very anticlimactic and totally unsatisfying and that ruined the whole narrative for me.  This movie will be released as a VOD on October 16 so I would definitely recommend waiting to see it then.