6/17/2023 0 Comments The secrets we keep![]() So I was doing a page one rewrite during pre-production and well into production. But this time, they really were ready to shoot in April. Now, in Hollywood, everybody says, “Oh, we’re shooting on this date,” and you never take it seriously. So we started meeting and talking about what we liked about the script, what we wanted to change…and we had that April start date. Let’s meet.” She’s a very forceful personality, and she really wanted to do this film-and when she wants to do something, it’s almost impossible to say no. Noomi saw it the same way and said, “Let’s talk about it. I had just finished another film, and while the premise for this script was fertile, it needed a very aggressive rewrite. I was kind of disinclined initially, because I was exhausted. Noomi saw Bethelehem, and she wants to talk to you.” They already had a start date-they came to me in December 2018 and the film was about to shoot in April. I knew Greg Shapiro, another producer of the film, from something I almost did with Kathryn Bigelow. Yuval Adler: Noomi Rapace brought it to me. Given the uniform excellence of the performances, I was eager to speak with Adler and ask about his actors and how he worked with them we hopped on the phone on the film’s opening day (it’s currently playing in theatres and will arrive on all major VOD platforms on October 16) and began by discussing the origins of the project. Rapace, Kinnaman, Messina and Seimetz are all fantastic in the movie, playing the moral complexities and ambiguities of their characters in ways that are natural and honest yet keep the audience (and the other characters) guessing, and Adler masterfully keeps the point of view where it should be in every scene for maximum emotional and intellectual force. When Thomas’ wife Rachel (Amy Seimetz) begins trying to figure out where her missing husband has gone the situation becomes even more of a pressure cooker, and director Adler expertly plays the audience like a piano, shifting our sympathies from one character to another as we’re constantly forced to recalibrate our assumptions and expectations. When Maja kidnaps Thomas and locks him in her basement, the film becomes a morally thorny and extremely suspenseful thriller in which the balance of power continually shifts between Maja, Lewis, and Thomas in fascinating ways. Their placid existence is upended when Maja becomes convinced that her neighbor Thomas (Joel Kinnaman) is a Nazi who tortured her years before during the war. Noomi Rapace, who also co-produced the film, plays Maja, a Romanian immigrant in post-World War II America who lives a quiet life with her physician husband Lewis (Chris Messina). Four of the best performances I’ve seen so far this year are all in the same movie, Yuval Adler’s riveting thriller The Secrets We Keep.
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