In The Secrets, two devout Israeli women and one dying sinner — an adulteress who killed her lover — are all living in Safed, an ancient city that thrums with holiness..
…First, the movie never fully explains why Anouk insists on pursuing Jewish rituals of confession and atonement when she is, in fact, Catholic. All she needed was a line or two (“Oh, I was excommunicated for heresy” or, “I want to make my peace with the God of the man I killed”), and her decision would have made some kind of sense. As it is, I wonder why Nesher and co-screenwriter Hadar Galron made her a gentile at all. Wouldn’t the plot carry more weight if Anouk were an outcast in her own religion? Wouldn’t the hoped-for moment of divine reconciliation be that much softer, that much sweeter?