Back from the dead

One reason is that it's based on the bestselling book by the cult US crime writer Harlan Coben.

Another is the array of Gallic stars who fill small roles and know how to make the best of them.

Francois Cluzet, however, has a very large role, on the screen for almost two hours as paediatric doctor Alex Beck, whose wife (Marie-Josee Croze) disappears while the pair are nude bathing in the countryside, apparently savagely murdered by person or persons unknown.

He is devastated, and a known serial killer is imprisoned for the deed.

But, eight years later, still not fully recovered from his loss, he receives an anonymous email.

When he clicks on the link, he sees a woman's face in a crowd, filmed in real time.

It looks like his wife, but why does she tell him to tell no one?

At the same time, two bodies are unearthed near the site of the murder and the police reopen the case.

Unfortunately, the doctor becomes chief suspect, since a photo of his wife is discovered that suggests she suffered violent abuse long before her supposed death.

There are so many plot complications that you struggle to compete with them, but the central performance is strong enough to keep the story from subsiding into its intricacies.

It emerges, first and foremost, as a man's desperate struggle to find his wife or learn the truth about her death.

On the way we luxuriate in cameos from Kristin Scott Thomas as his lesbian friend, who gazes fondly at waitresses bottoms while out to dinner with him, and from a host of others, such as Andre Dussollier; Jean Rochefort, Natalie Baye and Marina Hands.

Each has their moments but it is Cluzet's film.

Canet backs him up with views of Paris and its environs very different from the usual tourist hotspots, taking in the dangerously disaffected suburbs, the packed motorways and permanent stress of a crowded cosmopolitan city.

The best thriller in town still remains the fine Spanish Night of the Sunflowers, but this runs it close as a Gallic counter to The Bourne Conspiracy.

Tell No One (Ne Le Dis A Personne)
Cert: 15