Sony Classics is bringing Oscar-winning director Juan Jose Campanella’s “The Secret of her Eyes,” starring Ricardo Darin and Soledad Villamil to the U.S. and Canada.

“Secret,” Argentina’s bid for the foreign-language Oscar, has broken boxoffice records in Argentina.

The film tells of a recently retired detective who revisits an unsolved crime from his career only to find how it has intertwined with his own life.

Newly retired from his career in Argentina’s criminal court, Benjamín Espósito (Ricardo Darín) begins writing a novel about a case from his past that continues to haunt him. In 1974, a beautiful young newlywed was raped and murdered in her home while her husband worked at the bank. Espósito was sent to investigate the horrifying crime.

Looking at the gaze of a man in photos from the murdered woman’s college years, a younger Espósito instinctively feels he has his killer. Tracking down the suspect becomes a personal obsession that draws him and his colleague, the brilliant but unreliable alcoholic Pablo Sandoval (Guillermo Francella), into ever-riskier situations. The case also intensifies Espósito’s relationship to his young boss, Irene Menéndez Hastings (Soledad Villamil), a striking, Ivy League-educated woman whom he secretly, hopelessly adores. While initially critical of his unsanctioned sleuthing tactics, she soon becomes a partner in the investigation. Despite their dedication, however, inept officials and politics both internal and external to the court – the seventies was a turbulent era in Argentine history – threaten to let justice slip away.

Espósito’s story unfolds with gripping tension as the film shifts smoothly between time periods. Searching for an ending to his book, the older would-be writer makes a startling discovery that compels him to redeem his past and seize his future.

Campanella’s tightly paced feature pairs smart dialogue with powerful, moving performances. Darín and Villamil, two of Argentina’s best actors, bring an electric sense of unspoken longing to their scenes together, an intimacy of mutual suppression. A riveting sequence in which the two team up to interrogate a suspect is one of the film’s best.

Beneath all the action is a reflection on justice and the meaning of a life sentence. Pain endures but so, too, does love.

Diana Sanchez | TIFF

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