Thursday

I remember seeing the trailer for Tell No One a couple of months ago and thinking 'that looks great, and terrible'. There was something not quite right about it. I realised later that there was no dialogue - it was all narration. This was because the film itself is in French. Frequently you will see trailers of foreign films that deliberately don't include speech so as not to put off English audiences. I find it disconcerting. You are told about the movie by a narrator, and the characters never speak for themselves. It makes it seem like a bizarre dumb-show. The trailer for The Lives of Others (which I'm going to see tonight) does this too, and it goes on for several minutes. I remember watching it waiting for someone to speak, but they never did. Then, however, it seemed in a way appropriate to the material. I don't blame the filmmakers; it's English audiences that need to watch more foreign movies.

Anyway, there was something else that made Tell No One look terrible: an over-emphasis on the pulp novel (by Harlan Coben) that the film is adapted from. I'm guessing they were trying to get his millions of readers to see their movie. The problem, of course, is that Canet has adapted a pulp novel to make a more challenging work of art. The trailer invites viewers who probably won't like the film, and puts off those who will.