More to story than meets the eye

CLAUDE Miller is one of France's best directors, though he's not as well known as he deserves to be.

Patrick Bruel and Cecile de France

Un Secret (A Secret) (M) 4 stars Limited national release 21 (M) 2 stars National release CLAUDE Miller is one of France's best directors, though he's not as well known as he deserves to be.

He served his apprenticeship with Francois Truffaut and since his debut in 1976 he has impressed with films on a variety of subjects, including three very tasty thrillers, having adapted Patricia Highsmith and Ruth Rendell for the screen.

But he is best known for his films about young people. His first feature, La Meilleure Facon de Marcher (The Best Way) falls into this category, as do L'Effrontee, La Petite Voleuse and La Classe de Neige. His latest, Un Secret, based on a novel by Philippe Grimbert, also focuses on the world of a child, but it encompasses a fresh look at the plight of Jews under the German occupation of France during World War II.

The early scenes, which flit between 1955 (in colour) and 1985 (black and white) are briefly confusing until we sort out where Miller is taking us. Seven-year-old Francois (Valentin Vigourt) is the sort of boy we used to describe as weedy: he's slight and awkward and not very good at sports, to the disappointment of his parents, Maxime (Patrick Bruel), a gymnast, and the elegantly beautiful Tania (Cecile de France), a former champion swimmer.

Francois is self-conscious about his perceived inadequacies and he spends much of his time in a fantasy world involving an imaginary older brother who is everything he is not. Francois as a man, 30 years later, played by the excellent Mathieu Amalric (so impressive in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), still has an anxious air about him: he's searching for his now elderly father who has gone missing.

When Francois reaches the age of 14 (played by Quentin Dubuis), he is told by the friendly Louise (Julie Depardieu), who runs a massage parlour close to the clothing shop operated by his parents, the family secret that has affected his young life so powerfully. His father had been married before but had met and been instantly attracted to Tania on the day of his wedding to Hannah (Ludivine Sagnier). Tania was married to Hannah's brother. Maxime and Hannah had a child, Simon (Orlando Nicoletti), who has everything his father wanted in a son. As Francois discovers details of the story it takes on a new dimension.

Grimbert's novel was based on fact and the film declares that the story is based on real events. One of the most interesting aspects of what becomes a powerful and moving drama is the depiction of a divided France when the north, including Paris, was occupied by German forces while the south was a supposedly independent state (L'Etat Francais), established by Philippe Petain in 1940 and lasting until 1944.

For Jews suffering at the hands of the Nazis, escape into Vichy France was a chance of freedom, even though Petain collaborated closely with the Germans. This situation forms an important backdrop to Miller's beautifully made and poignant film.

The theme, ultimately, is guilt and how to expiate it. Maxime and Tania, though on one level happily married in post-war France, are still consumed with guilt. This has clearly affected their son, even though he has no way, at first, of knowing his family history and no way of knowing that the brother he imagines actually existed. All of this makes Un Secret, which shared the grand prize at last year's Montreal Film Festival, a complex and rewarding experience.

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THE new film by Australian-born Robert Luketic, 21, also takes its cue from real events, though far more mundane ones. Based on the book Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich, it would be unbelievable but for the assurance that it's basically true. One of the problems with the screenplay, by Peter Steinfeld and Allan Loeb, is that the intricacies of the story, in which a group of brilliant maths students win a fortune at blackjack in a Las Vegas casino, are never clear.

The central character, called Ben Campbell in the film, is a mathematical whiz-kid. Played by Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe), he's also handsome and charming, if a little shy.

He wants to go to Harvard medical school but lacks the funds and doubts he can win a scholarship. His dissolute maths teacher, Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey), recruits him into a team of similarly brilliant students to play the teacher's seemingly infallible method of blackjack and make a fortune.

The casino they visit uses an impenetrably complex method and employs Cole Williams (Laurence Fishburne) as a loss prevention officer whose idea of protecting the interests of his employers is to beat the daylights out of anyone who seems to be winning too much.

The real-life students succeeded in winning millions of dollars in the 1990s, but presumably the events have been embellished to provide (minimal) suspense and what passes for a narrative line. 21 is mildly entertaining. The actors are easy on the eye, locations glamorous, the entire package slick, gaudy and vacuous.

Spacey's is potentially the most interesting character: how does such a shady type hold down an important teaching job at a leading university? The film provides no answers, but the actor is obviously enjoying himself and plays Rosa with gusto. The audience isn't offered the same enjoyment by this superficial and ultimately hollow caper movie. Ocean's 11 and its sequels may be less realistic but they're far more fun.