Family ties (and spiritual transference, drug use, quasi-incest…): “The Secret”

The first thing we should get out of the way when reviewing The Secret is that the movie is not about a secret. At the heart of the film is an unexplained, possibly-supernatural event. But The Unexplained, Possibly-Supernatural Event isn’t as catchy a title. A translation of the French title, Si j’étais toi (If I Were You), would have worked better. The second thing to get out of the way right up front is that this movie takes on a whole different feel since David Duchovny’s recent admission to having a sex-addiction.

Whenever someone talks of sex-addiction, I automatically think of Dave Foley’s response to John Ritter in that Newsradio episode: “I’m from Wisconsin, so you’ll have to explain this to me. Is that the same as ‘getting a lot?’” But this isn’t the forum for that discussion. We’ll just take Duchovny at his word that the copious amounts of strange he gets on a regular basis is really screwing up his life. Still, given the plotline of The Secret it’s hard to watch the movie without seeing the story that would have unspooled had Duchovny been playing himself rather than mild-mannered optometrist Ben Marris.

Ben lives in relative idyll with loving wife Hannah (Lili Taylor), and nubile teenage daughter Samantha (Olivia Thirlby). They live in a wholesome, Canadian-looking suburb in a large house filled with all manner of sex toys tasteful furniture. Hannah is an amateur photographer, and framed shots decorate the walls. When Ben gets home from work he regularly greets his wife with a quick romp on the kitchen table kiss and the line “I’ve looked into fifteen pairs of eyes today, but my day doesn’t begin until I’ve looked into yours.” Chicks in the reading audience: is that romantic, because it sorta made me retch.

Samantha, naturally, hates her parents, her life, and everything else. She’s sixteen. Of course she does. Ben’s life falls apart when Samantha and Hannah leave for a weekend getaway and the escort service was raided by the vice squad get into a terrible car accident. Ben rushes to the hospital only to find that the nurses on duty will not indulge his repeated requests for furry-play both Samantha and Hannah are on life support. Hannah rallies briefly after Ben dry-humps a cardiac monitor, but crashes abruptly just as Ben is slapping the dolphin to a breast self-examination pamphlet he found in the lobby Samantha begins to pull through.

Things are off-kilter from jump, though, as Samantha begins screaming “Dad, put your pants on!” for her daughter. She freaks out upon seeing Ben dangling in a leather harness in the recovery room her reflection, and insists that she’s actually Hannah. The docs are stumped—there’s no brain-trauma that would cause a radical personality change—so Ben takes her to a strip-club home in the hopes that she will pony up for a lap dance recover on her own.

It doesn’t work that way. Samantha tries to convince Ben that she is actually Hannah by telling him things only Hannah would know, like the stuff she’d inserted in his rectum. Ben doesn’t understand what’s happening, but still doesn’t believe his daughter is inhabited by his wife’s spirit. Finally he begins to come around when he watches a supernatural porno film by Wicked Pictures visits the library and reads a lot of books (literally), then discusses Han-mantha’s condition with a researcher who swears he saw the same thing happen once in Africa. Because weird stuff has always happened before in Africa—just like Canada is filled with girlfriends in long-term relationships, but I digress.

Ben and Han-mantha decide that she should go back to high school to keep Samantha’s life going. Sort of like keeping someone’s seat warm while they’re gone, I guess. Anyway, Han-mantha goes back to school and struggles to fit in at the crappy public school. Meanwhile, at home, Ben tries to wrestle with a pair of Uzbekistani contortionists who then douse him in canola oil and read Karl Marx to him the fact that his wife has his daughter’s face and body. Their relationship begins to fray as Han-mantha—unable to physically be a wife to Ben–sinks deeper and deeper into Samantha’s life and persona.

Months go by, and the movie never really hits any denouement. Ben is now molesting the potted plants still drinking heavily, and Han-mantha has embraced her teenaged life as an opportunity to do the things she never got a chance to do as Hannah. She’s taking photography classes, working on the yearbook—Hannah doesn’t really aim very high. Finally, Han-mantha goes to a party where she snorts some Special K and freaks out as Samantha briefly re-enters her body. Ben busts into the party and plays Marco Polo and the Empress of Cathay with one of the hot, Asian students drags Han-mantha home. Later, she informs him that Samantha is reasserting herself and will be back soon. Han-mantha makes a video telling Samantha how much she loves her and how proud she is of her, and what an experience it was living her life. One morning Samantha wakes up as herself. And that’s pretty much it.

Bit of a fizzle, huh?

I give The Secret credit for not trying to evade the logical, if uncomfortable, questions that the premise brings up. It barrels right at the incest angle—poor Han-mantha has to contend with teenaged hormones, but her husband won’t touch her—even the most innocuous physical contact she initiates with Ben repulses him. Of course in the context of Duchovny’s recent admissions, we have to wonder if he’d really show that restraint, but that line of thought leads us down a road even ookier than the Tenfeet’s recent celebration of female armpit hair.

The movie also follows a logical course in Han-mantha’s journey into teenagerhood. Alienated from her husband, marginalized into the teenaged ghetto of high school, her “acting out” behavior makes perfect sense (unless you ask why a wealthy suburb has such shithole public schools).

Unfortunately, The Secret ultimately wimps out by making Samantha’s return inevitable and not a consequence of any choices the leads make. Ben and Han-mantha never have to make the choice that brings back Samantha and banishes Hannah or vice-versa. Neither does it force the movie to make what would otherwise be the inevitable choice between incest and the dissolution of the marriage. I was secretly hoping for some sort of tragic ending, in which Ben loses his wife to her own teenagerdom redux or gives in to his love for his wife and violates the incest taboo. No soap. Just a mom/daughter weepie.

The movie’s thin budget is also readily apparent in the cheap set-designs (once they get out of the expensive house), unconvincing street sets, and lack of extras (the hot, Asian chick and her bland-dude companion show up in the background in at least a half-dozen scenes).

Still, the actors give it their best. Thirlby gives a startlingly mature performance, allowing a woman in her late-30s to peer out of a 16 year-old shell. And it’s nice to see Lili Taylor do something other than the nutso/earth-mother/child-woman thing she usually gets stuck with.

Duchovny does his usual Duchovny thing—that slightly nerve-dead, slightly aloof delivery. I waited the whole movie for him to open an X-File on his daughter (which, come to think of it would have been better than the recent movie). So we didn’t get anything new out of him. At least he managed to keep his pants on.

For the most part.