Secret World (1969)

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Jacqueline Bisset is the big draw here. After breaking into the Hollywood bigtime with female leads in The Detective (1968) and Bullitt (1968) she put her newfound marquee weight behind a low-budget French arthouse picture.  But ignore the marketeers best efforts to present this as malevolent in the style of The Innocents (1961) or the illicit template of The Nightcomers (1971) or Malena (2000).

No children were corrupted in the making of this picture. Instead, it’s a slow-burn thoughtful exposition of a child coming to terms with loss and a young woman discovering she is more than a mere sexual plaything. Any explosive drama comes from father-son rivalry but mostly it’s a reflective, absorbing movie that follows twin narratives, the attraction of the orphaned introspective 11-year-old Francois (Jean-Francois Vireick) to the English mistress of his uncle Philippe (Pierre Zimmer) and the damage her arrival causes to a fractured household…

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