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Secret Things

Original title: Choses secrètes
  • 2002
  • Unrated
  • 1h 55m
IMDb RATING
6.0/10
5.2K
YOUR RATING
Coralie Revel and Sabrina Seyvecou in Secret Things (2002)
ComedyDramaFantasy

Two young women find themselves struggling to survive in Paris, street-wise Nathalie, a stripper, and naïve Sandrine, a barmaid. Together, they discover that sex can be used to their advanta... Read allTwo young women find themselves struggling to survive in Paris, street-wise Nathalie, a stripper, and naïve Sandrine, a barmaid. Together, they discover that sex can be used to their advantage, and pleasure. Both find positions in the office of a large bank, where bored, under-st... Read allTwo young women find themselves struggling to survive in Paris, street-wise Nathalie, a stripper, and naïve Sandrine, a barmaid. Together, they discover that sex can be used to their advantage, and pleasure. Both find positions in the office of a large bank, where bored, under-stimulated, prey are easy pickings. After making their way though several layers of executiv... Read all

  • Director
    • Jean-Claude Brisseau
  • Writer
    • Jean-Claude Brisseau
  • Stars
    • Coralie Revel
    • Sabrina Seyvecou
    • Roger Miremont
  • See production, box office & company info
  • IMDb RATING
    6.0/10
    5.2K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Jean-Claude Brisseau
    • Writer
      • Jean-Claude Brisseau
    • Stars
      • Coralie Revel
      • Sabrina Seyvecou
      • Roger Miremont
    • 33User reviews
    • 62Critic reviews
    • 55Metascore
  • See production, box office & company info
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 2 wins

    Photos15

    Fabrice Deville and Sabrina Seyvecou in Secret Things (2002)
    Coralie Revel and Sabrina Seyvecou in Secret Things (2002)
    Fabrice Deville, Coralie Revel, and Sabrina Seyvecou in Secret Things (2002)
    Secret Things (2002)
    Coralie Revel and Sabrina Seyvecou in Secret Things (2002)
    Sabrina Seyvecou in Secret Things (2002)
    Coralie Revel and Sabrina Seyvecou in Secret Things (2002)
    Coralie Revel in Secret Things (2002)
    Sabrina Seyvecou in Secret Things (2002)
    Coralie Revel and Sabrina Seyvecou in Secret Things (2002)
    Coralie Revel in Secret Things (2002)
    Coralie Revel in Secret Things (2002)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Coralie Revel
    Coralie Revel
    • Nathalie
    Sabrina Seyvecou
    Sabrina Seyvecou
    • Sandrine
    Roger Miremont
    Roger Miremont
    • Delacroix
    • (as Roger Mirmont)
    Fabrice Deville
    • Christophe
    Blandine Bury
    • Charlotte
    Olivier Soler
    • Cadene
    Viviane Théophildès
    • Mme. Mercier
    Dorothée Picard
    • Delacroix's Mother
    Pierre Gabaston
    • Bar Patron
    María Luisa García
    María Luisa García
    • Sandrine's Mother
    • (as Lisa Hérédia)
    Arnaud Goujon
    • Personnel Manager
    Liès Kidji
    • The Young Thief
    Patricia Candido Trinca
    • Office Employee
    Lydia Chopart
    • Office Employee
    Michaël Couvreur
    • Office Employee
    Boris Le Roy
    • Office Employee
    Aude Breusse
    • Office Employee
    Aurélien Geneix
    • Man at Party
    • Director
      • Jean-Claude Brisseau
    • Writer
      • Jean-Claude Brisseau
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Chosen by "Les Cahiers du cinéma" (France) as one of the 10 best pictures of 2002 (#01, with "Ten")
    • Goofs
      The end of the movie is supposed to take place after Nathalie is released from prison, several years after the main plot takes place. Yet the movies advertised on the advertisement pillar in the background (See Spot Run (2001), Town & Country (2001)) were released in France around the same weeks as the movies referenced in the main plot's time frame (Sleepwalker (2000) etc.).
    • Quotes

      Nathalie: Next chapter: Men, a user's manual. First pick a good one. But don't fall all over him. Play the good, innocent little girl. Let him play protector.

      Sandrine: We can all do that. Guys just want to get laid and move on.

      Nathalie: That's why you don't fuck 'em. At least not just like that. Without letting on, study them, get them talking. Discover their weak spots and passions: money, cars, I dunno... success, work. When you find out, you flatter them. Then, once you've chosen your man, you yield to him. Never on the first date. He'll think you're easy. Don't wait too long, either. After 3 or 4 dinners, then give him the works. Give him pleasure, make him think only he can make you climax, play the happy, docile woman, but not for too long. Soon in bed, you stop faking. Not seeing you climax will get him all worked up. Then without warning, drop him and start fooling around. Overtly. One night stands. If possible, with another woman. It'll humiliate him, drive him nuts. He'll come crawling back.

      Sandrine: It works every time?

      Nathalie: Just about. That's the mystery of human nature... we want what resists or escapes us.

      Sandrine: Who taught you that?

      Nathalie: Life. My mother. But she and I were poor. I also read a lot. I had schooling like you. It didn't keep us from enduing in the same strip club. We women lack confidence and daring. Someone always has to be behind us, egging us on. We're a bit like the working class. My mother said they'd stay that way for one reason: they didn't dare move up. "Dare!" That's what she'd always say. She knew about human nature.

      Sandrine: Meanwhile, no guy ever made me come.

      Nathalie: I know. And that's just fine!

      Sandrine: If you say so.

      Nathalie: You'll soon understand. What'd you do with your guy?

      Sandrine: I faked it.

      Nathalie: Why?

      Sandrine: I wanted to make him happy.

      Nathalie: No, you felt guilty, thinking it was your fault. You were wrong. Lesson 3: femmes fatales are usually narcissists or lesbians. They're frigid with men. They come when they want to, which isn't often. It's their strength. With famous courtesans...

      Sandrine: Want to make me a call girl?

      Nathalie: No, I'm teaching you about life. Now, with famous courtesans each guy wanted to succeed where others had failed. Pride will make a man spend a fortune to be seen with them. Frigidity helps with men. Sex enslaves you. The slave must be the other. Now you can come on your own, you're free. Get it?

      Sandrine: What about love?

      Nathalie: Our Enemy Number One. The real risk. In war, if you stop to think, you die. If we fall in love, we're done for. Has your life been such a thrill until now? Be realistic: no one'll help you change your life. True love can wait. Now show me how you fake it.

    • Connections
      Referenced in Cinema According to Brisseau (2007)
    • Soundtracks
      La Passion selon Saint-Jean
      Written by Johann Sebastian Bach

      Performed by Netherlands Radio Chorus

    User reviews33

    Review
    Review
    Featured review
    Devolution
    [S P O I L E R S]

    Either because they were too shocking, or too bad, or just too French, Jean-Claude Brisseau's previous nine films (some just done for TV) haven't made it to the US. Choses secrètes (Secret Things) is having some limited distribution here. The film seduces initially with its intelligence and its elegant look; then it betrays us with tendentiousness, tedium, and numbing excess. If you loved Luchino Visconti's The Damned or Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salò, you will have to see this. If you respected Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, you may want to consider Choses secrètes, which some think does its moral consideration of sex and its orgy scenes better.

    Whereas Dangerous Liaisons (the Choderlos de Laclos classic as well as its various film adaptations) involves the plot of a man and a woman to demolish a powerful and wicked female, this film involves two women out to get men in general. Brisseau's Nathalie (Coralie Revel), a stripper, coaches Sandrine (Sabrina Seyvecou), a barmaid, on how they can both become powerful through exploiting their own sexual daring. They've just been fired - literally thrown out on the street - from the club where they both work for refusing to have sex with customers afterward. Nathalie persuades the naïve, penniless Sandrine to move in with her and next day outlines her plan for the two of them to conquer the Paris business world.

    This is all to be done through sex, and from scene one, there's plenty of masturbation -- orgasms, real or faked, come as often as explosions in action flicks -- and plenty of nudity, but only female in each case. Nathalie's simplistic, rather old-fashioned rule is that if they can give themselves pleasure, they need never be enslaved to any man. The typically French rationality of Nathalie's exposition of her plan undercuts the obvious softcore aspects of the film - for a while, that is.

    And so does Choses secrètes' splendid appearance: the beauty of the two young women is set off by handsome cinematography and a generous use of sumptuous, richly colored drapery that makes the décor a pleasure to look at. One wishes American filmmakers could generate effects of taste and elegance with such simple means. But there is more to cinema than the visuals and this movie begins to seem little more than a Vogue shoot.

    Wilder and prettier: that's the two girls' selling point. On the strength of a certain provocative appeal, we're to believe, they're hired at a major financial corporation, Nathalie in personnel, Sandrine in the top administrative office. Again the film's seductive: the sudden rise may be far fetched, but you want to see what happens.

    Sandrine follows Nathalie's instructions and rejects a younger executive who wants to marry her: a big mistake; but she sticks to the program. Instead of dating the sincere young man, Sandrine seduces Delacroix, the firm's married, bored fifty-year-old (but handsome and lean) manager. Delacroix falls hopelessly in love. Sandrine fakes everything. Nathalie ignores her own rules and has a secret lover who hurts her. We have to guess who he is; but it's not hard: we know that Christophe (Fabrice Deville), the aged, ill boss's son, who's heir to the corporate fortune, is a gorgeous seducer who's literally driven women to commit suicide right before his eyes - and enjoyed watching. Christophe has a preposterous back-story to explain his moral emptiness.

    Things go rapidly downhill when this monster of evil begins to dominate the scene. It doesn't help that the slightly corpulent Christophe looks more like last year's model than a real person. Looks and sound effects have started to take over Choses secrètes at this point. There haven't been such scenes of elegant depravity since Visconti. But there are too many orgies with Bach and Vivaldi masses played at top volume for background. It's over the top: the film self-destructs before one's eyes. And the old-fashioned moral tale - replete with blatant titillation over the `hell' it depicts - morphs into an increasingly tedious and surreal scenario. There's an angel of annihilation, a face transfixed by death, a bird of prey pecking at a bleeding chest: we're on the wilder fringes of the French imagination. Cocteau did this sort of thing much better.

    In a final scene several years later Nathalie and Sandrine, now on separate paths, have a brief final meeting. One has a wholesome life and the other has become a pampered princess: using a stretch limo to suggest the latter's wealth was a genuinely bad idea. Both women look exactly the same as ever: like this year's models. The movie has completely disintegrated. There is nothing left to care about.

    But I did love the drapery in Nathalie's bedroom. It promised better things.

    For an infinitely smarter and ultimately more chic French film about love games, if you don't want to go to the source, de Laclos' Dangerous Liaisons and its film versions, rent a copy of Benoît Jacquot's School of Flesh (L'École de la chair), with Isabelle Huppert at her most sublimely disdainful. Nathalie and Sandrine combined aren't fit to dust her shoes.
    helpful•52
    12
    • Chris Knipp
    • Feb 12, 2004

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    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • October 16, 2002 (France)
    • Country of origin
      • France
    • Language
      • French
    • Also known as
      • Choses secrètes
    • Filming locations
      • Paris, France
    • Production companies
      • Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC)
      • La Sorcière Rouge
      • Les Aventuriers de l'Image
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

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    • Gross US & Canada
      • $105,090
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $9,421
      • Jan 4, 2004
    • Gross worldwide
      • $234,255
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 55 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • DTS
      • Dolby SR
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.33 : 1

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