“Nothing To Hide” Makes Its Simple Premise Work
As the motivations and secrets of these characters trickle out, we get a very affecting portrait of how relationships suffer when communication breaks down. Each of these people is earnestly trying to maintain a specific image of themselves in the eyes of their peers, necessitating lies and half truths that shouldn’t exist between friends.
We’ve all done it. Truth or Dare in various forms, forced confessions meant to embarrass or entertain those in attendance. But Nothing To Hide, the new French drama from Netflix adds a vaguely supernatural element to the affair, leading to a night of revelations and discoveries that fracture a friendly dinner party, only to return things to normal when a lunar apocalypse ends.
A simple disagreement about smartphone privacy turns into a radical sharing challenge for a small group of old school friends. Every call, every text message and every notification must be shared with the group. As they each individually seek to discover the secrets of their partners and friends while obscuring the truth of their own relationships, things explode and tensions rise as they are forced to reveal their true selves.
It’s hard to talk about Nothing To Hide without spoiling major plot points, and it’s very worth it to come upon them organically. For lovers of gossip and drama, this film delivers on both, incorporating twists and turns that were at once both shocking and extremely human. The reveals are cumulative rather than individually salacious; each new revelation builds on the last to add a new piece to the larger puzzle of these characters’ lives. Which characters are having physical or emotional affairs, which are hiding their same sex relationships, which are secretly pregnant, which are planning on plastic surgery; it all comes out gradually and in fits and starts.
As the motivations and secrets of these characters trickle out, we get a very affecting portrait of how relationships suffer when communication breaks down. Each of these people is earnestly trying to maintain a specific image of themselves in the eyes of their peers, necessitating lies and half truths that shouldn’t exist between friends. The veneer of perfect marriages crack, friendships are strained and the characters are forced to deal with the poor decisions that led a perfectly nice dinner party into a state of chaos.
Nothing To Hide is as gripping as any thriller, and cranks the real drama of human emotion up to 11, effectively taking real life scenarios and exploiting them for maximum impact. This moody drama and its shocking conclusion are a perfect introduction to the twists and turns of French cinema.