A Secret | |
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Film poster
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Directed by | Claude Miller |
Produced by | Yves Marmion |
Written by | Claude Miller |
Based on |
Un secret by Philippe Grimbert |
Starring |
Cécile De France Patrick Bruel Ludivine Sagnier Julie Depardieu |
Music by | Zbigniew Preisner |
Cinematography | Gérard de Battista |
Edited by | Véronique Lange |
Distributed by | UGC Distribution |
Running time
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Country | France |
Language | French |
Box office | $14.4 million |
A Secret (French: Un secret) is a 2007 French film directed and written by Claude Miller. The screenplay was based on the novel by Philippe Grimbert.
The film follows Maxime Nathan and his Jewish family in France during the years leading up to World War II. François Grimbert (played as a young boy by Valentin Vigourt and as an adult by Mathieu Amalric) grows up in Paris in the 1950s. He is the skinny, sickly son of two marvelously athletic parents, Tania (Cécile de France) and Maxime (Patrick Bruel). For a while, he dreams of a stronger, fitter, more charismatic older brother to compensate for his own feelings of inadequacy. Only gradually does he learn of his parents' tragic past and that he has a sibling — a half-brother named Simon, his father's first son.
Simon is the big secret, but the discovery opens the door to further revelations and deeper enigmas. François knows that his parents met sometime around the war, and he imagines their courtship and marriage in the shadow of atrocities which nobody talks about any more.