A Secret is a true story about how Jewish families in France were treated under the Vichy regime. When the film begins in Paris during the year 1955, a fourteen-year-old boy, François Grimbert (played by Quentin Dupuis) looks into a family treasure box and finds a stuffed dog; his Aunt Louise (played by Julie Depardieu) reveals the significance of the animal, namely, the family's secrets. In 1942, a Jewish family in Paris makes preparations to relocate to a rural part of Vichy France with fake IDs. Maxine Nathan Grimberg (played by Patrick Bruel), the husband, goes first, leaving his spouse Hannah (played by Ludivine Sagnier) to close up their tailor shop and bring their seven-year-old son, Simon (played by Orlando Nicoletti). However, when the time comes, she deliberately exposes her Jewish identity, and mother and child end up in Auschwitz. Directed by Claude Miller under the title Un Secret, and based on the autobiographical novel by Philippe Grimbert, the slowmoving film ties in the two events because Maxime adulterously has sex with Tania (played by Cecile de France) while awaiting his wife, and they later marry. François is baptized Catholic to continue the deception, but his parents commit suicide while he is young. So the secret is that his father is Jewish and, in a search that continues to 1985 (when François is played by Mathieu Amalric), he learns that his birthmother and half-brother (who treasured the stuffed dog) died one day after their arrival at the deathcamp. MH
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