Two aimless women decide to move on up the social ladder by using their bodies. The ensuing comedy of office manners culminates in a quasi-philosophical orgy of pretense and trashy would-be kicks that takes its rightful place among the worst movies I have ever seen.
American audiences tend to have two basic misconceptions about French film: that it's sexy, and that it's arty. As anybody who's seen their share knows, both can be true some of the time, and depending on the filmmaker, this can be a good or a bad thing. "Secret Things" tries very, very hard to be both sexy and arty, and winds up being laughable.
In the early scenes, the stripper Nathalie (Coralie Revel) and her friend Sandrine (Sabrina Seyvecou) develop a taste for public masturbation, and the plot stops dead for long periods of rubbing and moaning. Later, the two take office jobs and play with their bosses' desires -- until they meet their match in the form of the beefy Christophe (Fabrice Deville), a fearless woman-eater with the most ludicrous back-story in recent memory who is given to speechifying about God and Death while he rubs and moans.
Lauded by critics evidently too bamboozled to call Jean-Claude Brisseau's bluff (the film won the Cahiers Du Cinema award), "Secret Things" is like watching sub-par soft porn while listening to a bargain Nietzsche audiobook. At the screening I saw, Christophe's pompous declarations were punctuated by titters and guffaws from the audience, and I was on the verge of napping out during the climactic orgy scene. This should tell you everything you need to know about "Secret Things."
