Secretos

Rotterdam veteran Raúl Ruiz wrote the screenplay for this film, based on an idea by his wife Valeria Sarmiento, who was in turn responsible for directing. The result has the same deceptive simplicity as the work of Ruiz himself, and allows itself to be typified as professional amateurism.
Secretos is a light-footed comedy with a dark edge, about several former Chilean revolutionaries who – as the title betrays – all have their own secrets. A man nicknamed El Traitor returns from exile in Paris to his home country and tries to pick up and rediscover his old life, revealed in flashbacks. It soon becomes clear that intimate personal contact is more important than all kinds of lofty ideals; in other words: it’s not the battle for a just world that makes you a better person, but a radical love for your nearest and dearest. This solidarity is demonstrated in the opening scene, when a young Chilean crook in a Paris lift abandons his robbery when he realises his victim is a compatriot. The compact scenes are linked together by the sounds of a barrel organ that provide a continual undertone putting things in perspective. At a certain moment it comes into view like a Hitchcock apparition.