| | |  | Drama | Home » » » The Secrets | | | | | | | Description: | | Naomi, the brilliant and pious daughter of an ultra orthodox rabbi finds herself at a crossroads of life choices when her mother dies and she is expected to immediately marry her father's prodigy. Distressed yet determined, she begs that her father allow her one year to study at a women's religious seminary in Safed, the birthplace of the Kabala in order to prepare herself for the sacrifices she will make as a wife. Her father relents and Naomi's life begins to take an unexpected turn.
Devote but lively, Naomi and her new friend Michelle befriend a beautiful, mysterious older woman, Anouk, (Fanny Ardant) who is ill and living nearby who may or may not be Jewish, and may have committed a crime of passion. Naomi devises a series of rituals which will somehow purify Anouk and purge her of her sins, but as these stretch the borders of Jewish law they must be kept secret. Eventually this journeys into the forbidden and leads to a growing attraction between the two girls and more crossroads are faced.
The Secrets presents the complexities of a religious lifestyle in a vibrant environment of youth, rebellion and desire. | | | Product Details: | | | Actors:
| Fanny Ardant, Ania Bukstein, Michal Shtamler, Adir Miller | | Director:
| Avi Nesher | | Format:
| Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled | | Language:
| French, Hebrew | | Subtitle:
| English | | Number of Discs:
| 1 | | Studio:
| MONTEREY VIDEO | | Run Time:
| 127 minutes | | DVD Release Date:
| April 07, 2009 | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 29 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 29 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
47 of 50 found the following review helpful:
 Extraordinary - One of the Best to Come from IsraelMay 26, 2009
By Gerard D. Launay
Call it an acquired taste. First of all I am Jewish and I have spent a considerable amount of time studying its religious texts...Thus a film about the process of analyzing scripture or the Talmud is likely to find favor in my eyes whereas others might gravitate towards science fiction or romantic comedy.
I thought "The Secrets" was one of the best dramas to arrive from Israel...but it is not in the mold of a holocaust memory film, a war film, or an exploration of ethnic tensions.
The movie is about personal choices, moral choices, partner choices. Ostensibly it revolves around a story of Noemi, a very bright young woman - a daughter of an important rabbi in the Orthodox community - who asks to study for one more year rather than rush into a marriage dictated by her father,
She first approaches problems as a "know-it-all", and then discovers that others have answers, even to tough religious and moral questions. Through that process, she develops a deep, let's say, intimate relationship with another young woman, Michal, in the Orthodox seminary. But this movie is not really about a same-sex relationship as it it about making choices...some of those choices carry great personal baggage and some of those choices are entirely unorthodox.
All the performances are top notch. Two scenes stick out in my mind. In the first, Noemi is deep in the library analying the Talmud to find a way to help a troubled, mortally sick stranger repair her broken relationship to God. She does so even when the traditional rabbis have all but given up on the stranger. The second scene involves the prospective groom of Michal - a pharmacist who moonlights as a klezmer musician - who reveals great courage (and tolerance) in asking Noemi to come to his upcoming wedding. When he makes that request he knows that Noemi has been intimate with his bride. (How many us, religious or not, orthodox or not, could do that!)
A final remark. Unlike some of the other reviewers, I don't experience the ending of the film as negative. Just the opposite. In summary, "The Secrets" is not only an excellent movie, it is a meaningful one.
73 of 83 found the following review helpful:
 Good film with a bummer of an endingMay 18, 2009
By K. E. Fox
"Voracious reader and movie fanatic"
I bought this film based on supposed lesbian relationship discussed in the teaser. As I watched this well crafted and acted film, I was swept away by the intense storyline of a young woman pursuing her dream to become a rabbi, despite the misogynistic culture/religion of Orthodox Judaism. I also enjoyed the storyline of the two young women in a feminist seminary trying to give peace to an older woman who was dying of cancer, and had been rejected by the town. However, what really killed this movie for me was the very unhappy ending of the two female leads, who were supposedly in love. I have literally seen dozens of films and tv shows where two women who are in love can never lively happily ever after at the end of the show and this film fit that bitter and homophobic cliche to a 'T.' The romance between the two women might not have been important to anyone else but it was very important to me. I cried at the end of this movie because I was so bitterly disappointed.
19 of 22 found the following review helpful:
An emotionally stirring tale, highly recommendedApr 13, 2009
By Midwest Book Review
The Secrets: A Film by Avi Nesher is a multiple award-winning movie about Naomi, the intelligent, faithful, and devoted daughter of an orthodox rabbi who must prepare for difficult choices in her life when her mother dies and she has to marry her father's prodigy. She begs her father for a year to study at a women's religious seminary to prepare for the sacrifices she must make as a wife and mother, and is permitted to do so. She befriends a schoolmate, Michelle, and a sickly older woman, Anouk (played by Fanny Ardant), who might be guilty of a terrible crime of passion. Naomi invents a progression of rituals designed to help Anouk release her sins, a process which brings Naomi and Michelle closer together - close enough to develop a forbidden attraction. An emotionally stirring tale, highly recommended. Special features include a "behind the scenes" video with subtitled actor interviews, deleted scenes, two music videos, and a photo gallery. Rated R, 127 minutes, Hebrew with English subtitles.
8 of 9 found the following review helpful:
Female, frum, and feministFeb 07, 2010
By Anyechka
Unlike certain other movies one might think of (such as Kadosh and A Price Above Rubies), this film very sensitively and accurately portrayed Hareidi life. In spite of the crazies who grab all of the headlines with antics such as spraying bleach on women wearing pants and short skirts or violently protesting at the Jerusalem Intel because it's open on Shabbos, the reality is that most Hareidim are more along the lines of the people shown in this film. These characters are multi-faceted, and part of a community that is very warm, loving, and loyal to its own, even though certain of the characters test those limits of loyalty because of how they ultimately don't quite fit in. After her mother dies, the scholarly Naomi asks her father, who hasn't balked at teaching her Torah and Talmud, to postpone her marriage to Michael so she can study in seminary for a year. After initial hesitation, he relents and agrees to let Naomi study at a women's seminary in the holy and mystical city of Tzfat. This seminary turns out to be run by a Hareidi feminist hoping to provide higher education to young women and empower them in that way. As the headmistress tells Naomi in one scene, as Orthodox women their liberation is a lot more difficult than and different from the liberation of non-Orthodox women, because they have to work within certain strictures and change things much slower. Naomi is put with three roommates--Sheine, whom she meets on the bus; Sigi, a ba'alat teshuvah (newly religious) who later kind of goes off of the deep end (as sometimes happens with ba'alei teshuvah, going from one extreme to the other without enough time for slow transition), and the much more progressive and secular Michelle (Michal), who didn't go to the seminary of her own choosing but because her French parents wanted her to. The unlikely pair of Naomi and Michelle are soon bonding after being assigned to deliver food to a dying outcast Frenchwoman, Anouk, with a dark secret in her past and a desire to make amends within herself and with God before she passes on. Though traditionally one must be at least 40 years old, male, and married before starting to study Kabbalah, Naomi begins constructing a Tikun based on the teachings of the Arizal so that Anouk can achieve her hoped-for repentance. As the story progresses, Naomi also starts to have second thoughts about her upcoming marriage to Michael and instead falls in love with Michelle, who herself has caught the eye of the endearing Yanki, a clarinetist who, like Naomi and Michelle, also doesn't quite fit into Hareidi society.
Each character is portrayed so vividly that they come across like real people instead of stock characters or people acting out a script. I also liked how it took awhile for the story to unfold and for the characters to develop, even though my boyfriend didn't like how Naomi and Michelle didn't do anything physically until the film was about halfway through. Too many modern American movies are so predictable, with the viewer knowing within 15 minutes what's going to happen and who's going to end up with whom, but in this film, we don't immediately know what's going to happen, like if Naomi and Michelle will decide to live together as a lesbian couple, if Naomi will marry Michael or break the engagement, if Michelle and Yanki will end up together, what Anouk's backstory is and if she'll achieve peace and a sense of atonement, if the seminary will accept or disapprove of Michelle and Naomi's delving into Kabbalah. The story also illustrates, as the headmistress said, just how difficult it is to be female, feminist, and frum. As someone who's not Orthodox, it's easy to say they should just affiliate with Masorti (Conservative) or Liberal/Progressive (Reform) Judaism, or at least find a liberal Modern Orthodox community. This is their entire world, life, culture, identity. They can't just leave the only world they know how to exist in and relate to, even if they do test the outer limits of what's considered acceptable within that world. Someone as brilliant as Naomi faces an uphill battle in her desire to become a rabbi, unlike a woman in a non-Orthodox denomination who faces no opposition anymore to applying to rabbinical school. A lesbian relationship might not be prohibited by the Torah (as Naomi points out, it's never even mentioned in there) and only have a relatively mild Talmudic censure, but it's also not exactly easy to live as a fully frum person who is out of the closet. Yanki is a great person, but because he chose to be a klezmer musician instead of a rabbi or studying in kollel full-time his entire life, he isn't respected as much as someone like Michael. The film also leaves a number of questions to contemplate, as opposed to tying everything up with neat hospital corners and a stereotypical happy Hollywood ending.
7 of 8 found the following review helpful:
Simply great! More movies needs to be like this one.Jun 11, 2009
By Crimson/Silver
Truly great all-around. Worth every penny and every minute watching this movie. A beautiful and emotional story of different worlds.
This movie makes you think, and it makes you hurt, and it makes you want to watch it again and again. Then in the end, you are still left wondering and pondering. Then, you watch it again, hoping that the end will be different this time through.
Just like life, this movie will not provide you with answers to all of the issues. The Secrets will leave you questioning:
-was there really a murder or did the human mob acted in a way of hysteria and condemned a woman to prison because of her decisions in life
-will Naomi and Michal continue their relationship even after her wedding?
-will Naomi's family ever know the true nature as to why she is not marrying Michael (her fiance), or will her father continue to ostracize her due to the fact that she wants to become a female Rabbi in the Ultra-Orthodox society.
And the list goes on and on. Yes, I was left with wonder after viewing this movie. More movies should be made using The Secrets as a template. Acting was subperb.
Worth it.
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