Every Secret Thing begins with every little girl Gilmore Girl fantasy. Staying up late with your mother (no dad in sight) doing your nails, baking cookies. We can see it in her hungry eyes, that is all Alice Manning 11, wants. She is lying on the floor, her legs on the bed.
As she sees her mom, Helen, (Diane Ladd) and the room upside down, the reality of that moment is also topsy turvy. The spell breaks assoon as Ronnie Fuller, also 11, comes to pick her up. Alice doesn’t want to be friends with Ronnie. Her trashy ways bring Alice down in the eyes of the other girls. But her mother insist. Why? Well not out of the goodness of her heart. Or does she?
Every Secret Thingg shows us the day leading up to the first crime through Alice eyes. It is a formative day for her. The day she learns her mother prefers Ronnie above her, and if that isn’t enough, Ronnie ruins everything by getting them thrown out of the popular girl’s birthday party.
Alice, the narrator, tells us what happend next. When they walk home, Ronnie sees an baby carriage left outside on a porch. She decides that the adorable biracial baby belongs to her, and against Alice’s objections decides to take her.
Every little secret involves two mysteries, the abduction of this girl is followed, seven years later, by another abduction of a biracial girl. Alice (Danielle MacDonald) and Ronnie (Dakota Fanning), who have spend seven years in juvenile detention for the murder of the first girl, just happen to have been released a few day earlier.
Every Secret Thing is a 2014 American crime film directed by Amy J. Berg and written by Nicole Holofcener, based on a 2004 novel of the same name written by Laura Lippman. The film stars Diane Lane, Elizabeth Banks, Dakota Fanning, Danielle Macdonald, and Nate Parker, and is notable for being Academy Award-winning actress Frances McDormand’s debut as producer. The film was released theatrically on May 15, 2015 and on home video on August 4, 2015.
Film Review for Every Secret Thing
What went wrong? How did so many talented people devote their time and energy to a film that came out this generic, dull, and flat? Director Amy Berg certainly knows a thing or two about warped perversions of human need as proven by her work directing documentaries like “Deliver Us From Evil” and “West of Memphis.” And screenwriter Nicole Holofcener has been one of the best in her field with gems like “Lovely and Amazing” and “Enough Said.”
Perhaps neither was quite suited for this material as Berg’s skill with non-fiction doesn’t translate to her first narrative film and Holofcener’s gifts with character are smothered by the twisting and turning requirements of airport bookstore thriller fiction. Whatever the case, “Every Secret Thing” is a misfire on multiple levels, only slightly redeemed by yet another good performance from a Fanning and some strong supporting work on the fringe of this cautionary tale.
Seven years ago, Ronnie Fuller (Dakota Fanning) and Alice Manning (Danielle Macdonald) were convicted of kidnapping and killing a baby girl who was grabbed from her porch in broad daylight. Both pointed the finger at the other one, and both were sent to juvenile detention for their formative years. Two weeks after Fuller and Manning are released back into the real world, a 3-year-old girl is snatched from a furniture store in the middle of the day, as her parents (including Common) shop for a new mattress. Did Ronnie or Alice repeat the crime from their youth?
Detective Nancy Porter (Elizabeth Banks), who, of course, is the same cop who found the body in the first case, is called in on the second one, partnered with a gruffer fellow detective (Nate Parker), and on the urgent hunt for answers. Sort of. One of the many dramatic ingredients lacking from “Every Secret Thing” is a sense of urgency. Say what you will about the histrionics of something like “Prisoners,” I far prefer that to the lackadaisical approach here, in which Banks is forced to occasionally spit out lines about how they’re looking for a toddler who may already be dead but the filmmaking never matches the intensity of the situation.
The reason “Every Secret Thing” lacks intensity is because Holofcener and Berg forgot to craft real characters. Every single person in this film is a cog in the thriller machine, and most of their dialogue merely pushes the mystery forward. There’s something buried deep within this narrative about bad parenting—Ronnie’s are essentially absent while Alice’s mom, played by Diane Lane, is simply a horrible person, berating her overweight daughter in scenes of domestic awfulness that feel overly scripted, under-directed, and just false. Worst of all, Macdonald is forced to carry much of the dramatic weight of the second half of “Every Secret Thing” and she proves incapable of doing so. Only Fanning (and Common in a few scenes) seem well-cast and engaged by the script. Everyone else varies from mediocre to awful.
How do bad movies happen? It’s clear that “Every Secret Thing” was made with good intentions. It certainly doesn’t feel like it fell off a Hollywood movie assembly line. Again, it may have been a project that simply didn’t play to the skills of its director or screenwriter, and no one was willing to admit that given the success they had found in the past. Everyone will come out of this unscathed. Berg already has a new doc making waves and Holofcener isn’t going anywhere. Banks, Lane, Fanning—they’ll be in great films again. In fact, it may be best for everyone involved if “Every Secret Thing” stays between only a select few viewers.
Every Secret Thing (2015)
Directed by: Amy J. Berg
Starring: Diane Lane, Elizabeth Banks, Dakota Fanning, Eva Grace Kellner, Danielle Macdonald, Brynne Norquist, Nate Parker, Common, Colin Donnell, Tonye Patano, Julito McCullum, Clare Fole
Screenplay by: Nicole Holofcener
Production Design by: Molly Hughes
Cinematography by: Rob Hardy
Film Editing by: Ron Patane, Billy McMillan
Costume Design by: Emma Potter
Set Decoration by: Susan Perlman
Art Direction by: Nicole Eckenroad
Music by: Robin Coudert
MPAA Rating: R for some language and disturbing images.
Distributed by: Starz Digital Media
Release Date: April 20, 2014 (Tribeca Film Festival), May 15, 2015 (United States)
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