Rating:

Where the book was set in New York, the film - by Guillaume Canet - takes place in Paris and the countryside around Versailles. Yup, it's French, but if you're subtitle-phobic, don't be. Widescreen and wildly exciting, Tell No One (Ne le dis à personne) is easily among the more satisfying summer movies out there.

Alexandre (Francois Cluzet) and Margot (Marie-Josee Croze) have been soul mates since childhood. After dropping in on friends and family, the pair, recently married, head off to a secluded lake, where they've been going since they were kids. It's night, a full moon, and as Alex floats on a dock, he hears Margot yelling for help from the shore.

What follows is bad, brutal. And then: "Eight years later . . .," it says on the screen. Alexandre is a pediatrician, living alone. He has his sister (Marina Hands) and a good friend (Kristin Scott-Thomas) for company - and grief still welled up within. Margot was the apparent victim of a serial killer. But apparent is the key word: After all this time, Alexandre receives an e-mail suggesting that his wife, in fact, is alive.

And when two bodies turn up, long buried in the woods near the lake, the police - who never believed Alexandre to begin with - are back on the case. What follows is tricky (and may not stand up to careful scrutiny) but in classic Hitchcock style, Alexandre becomes a man on the run, trying to prove his innocence, unearth the truth, and find Margot - if she lives - with cops and a gang of thugs hot on his trail.

Cluzet, remindful of a younger, more agile Dustin Hoffman, is keen-eyed and intense in the lead. There's a Bourne-like chase sequence through the streets of Paris - winding up on a buzzing beltway - that's riveting stuff, and a scene in a suburban housing project where the police are anything but welcome, and where Alexandre goes looking for clues. Two actresses - Croze and Hands - will be familiar to viewers of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, while the patrician Jean Rochefort has a small, pivotal role, and Gilles Lellouche is brilliant as Bruno, a gangster who owes his child's life to Alexandre, and who repays the debt in the nick of time.

Tell No One ***1/2 (out of four stars)

Directed by Guillaume Canet. With Francois Cluzet, Marie-Josee Croze, Kristin Scott-Thomas, Marina Hands and Gilles Lellouche. Distributed by Music Box Films. In French with subtitles.

Running time: 2 hours, 5 mins.

Parent's guide: No MPAA rating (violence, profanity, nudity, adult themes)

Playing at: Ritz Five