Review: Every Secret Thing
One's interest doesn't just wander when watching Every Secret Thing, it flees with alacrity from the dreariness and banality. Documentarian Amy Berg's narrative debut is controlled and composed; it should be more interesting than it is given its playground of thematic possibilities - obsessions with mother love and body issues, the seeds that rot instead of flourish, an almost incisive commentary on race, gender, and class. Unfortunately, it sinks so fast into turgidity that it can never hope to recover.
Alice and Ronnie (Brynne Norquist and Eva Grace Kellner) are seen as eight-year-olds who are outside the periphery of popularity. They share an uneasy bond, one enforced by Alice's mother Helen (Diane Lane), who has embraced the lonely and friendless Ronnie as if she were her own blood. Walking home after an humiliating experience at a birthday party, Ronnie hears the sound of a crying baby. As the opening credits roll, we learn via a series of newspaper headlines that the biracial baby went missing and was found dead, and that the two girls were sentenced to serve seven years for its murder.
A decade later, another mixed-race baby goes missing not long after both Alice and Ronnie (Danielle Macdonald and Dakota Fanning) are released from prison. Detective Nancy Porter (Elizabeth Banks) believes there may be a connection, but her personal stake in the matter may be clouding her judgment. It was Porter who discovered the body of the missing baby ten years ago, a trauma that continues to haunt.
As she questions both girls, it becomes less and less clear what happened all those years ago. Alice has always pled innocent - she never knew why Ronnie killed the baby, she wasn't even there when it happened, but she went to jail anyway because "No one ever believes the fat girl." The meek and mascaraed Ronnie tells Porter that Alice was not only fine with keeping the baby, but threatened to blame it all on Ronnie when she wanted to take the ailing baby to the hospital. If you have somehow managed to survive being drained of life throughout this viewing ordeal, then you may feel somewhat rewarded by the big reveal.
Director Berg and the normally perceptive screenwriter Nicole Holofcener share equal credit for this slack, meandering, and often cheap mess. Banks and Fanning do what they can with their ill-defined characters. Lane is practically in Mommie Dearest territory, providing a welcome dose of camp. Macdonald is extremely strong as Alice, whose angry resentment at how life has treated her warps her self-love.
Every Secret Thing
Directed by: Amy Berg
Written by: Nicole Holofcener
Starring: Diane Lane, Elizabeth Banks, Dakota Fanning, Danielle Macdonald, Common, Nate Parker, Brynne Norquist, Eva Grace Kellner
