On Screen: “The Secret Woman”
The Secret Woman
Netflix’s intriguing Danish psychological thriller “The Secret Woman” introduces a lady with amnesia who learns that she’s not only a missing heiress but also married and the mother of a young son.
The story begins in Denmark as an adult female is climbing over the railing of a huge bridge with someone in pursuit. Terrified, she jumps off, just as a cargo ship passes below.
Cut to: Louise Andersen (Natalie Wolfsberg Madueno) who runs a small café on the idyllic Norwegian island of Hidra with her novelist fiancé Joachim (Pal Sverre Hagen). Their peaceful life is shattered when a stranger appears, insisting that her real name is Helene, not Louise.
Obviously shaken, she admits she’s still suffering from amnesia. So she goes to the attic, opens one of several packing boxes and finds a purse containing Louise’s ID card and a shattered compact mirror that triggers jumbled memories.
One clue leads to another, culminating in a DNA test that proves she’s really Helene Soderberg, not Louise Andersen. That discovery propels her to fly to Denmark to confront her husband, Edmund (Claes Bang), and find her son, Alexander (David Elting).
Edmund and Alexander live on the palatial estate that belonged to Helene’s late father, Aksel (Lars Simonsen), a shipping magnate. Edmund’s doting mother Caroline (Stina Ekblad) has been caring for Alexander since they assumed Helene had committed suicide.
Based on a best-selling 2017 novel by Anna Ekberg (the pen name used by Anders Rennow Klarlund and Jacob Weinreich), adapted by Anders August and director Barbara Topsoe-Rothenborg, the mystery takes a deep dive when Helene discovers the ‘real’ identity of Louise Andersen, leading to a criminal conspiracy that’s been carefully concealed within her father’s shipping company for many years.
While there’s lots of layers of intrigue, the question remains: Did Helene really have amnesia? The last scene in which she looks directly at the camera with a meaningful smirk leaves one wondering.
In Danish and English with English subtitles, on the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Secret Woman” is a suspenseful 7, streaming on Netflix.
Susan Granger is a product of Hollywood. Her natural father, S. Sylvan Simon, was a director and producer at M.G.M. and Columbia Pictures. Her adoptive father, Armand Deutsch, produced movies at M.G.M.
As a child, Susan appeared in movies with Abbott & Costello, Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, Margaret O’Brien, and Lassie. She attended Mills College in California, studying journalism with Pierre Salinger, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in journalism.