Most movies feature a kind of built-in thematic tension. It’s there in the genres: romantic-comedy, docu-drama, science-fiction, action-adventure. (Granted, not a lot of tension in that one.)

The Secret in Their Eyes (El secreto de sus ojos) is best described as a complex film noir, mixing elements of a classic detective story with a deliciously understated tale of unrequited love and just enough humour to loosen your white-knuckle grip on the armrests. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film in which these elements dance together in such harmony, neither detracting from nor overshadowing one another.

The story, adapted from a novel, takes place in Buenos Aires, moving back and forth between 1974 and 1999. In latter days, Benjamín Espósito (Ricardo Darin) is a retired justice agent, struggling to write a fictionalized account of a murder case that took place 25 years earlier and haunts him still. He goes to see his former boss, played by the quiet beauty Soledad Villamil. She gives him an old typewriter -- which, we’ll learn later, has its own departmental history -- and suggests he start at the beginning.

This is the cue for the film to slide into flashback, a task director Juan José Campanella does with a slippery certainty; not only does the typewriter exist in both past and present, but other objects and even sounds slide from one timeline to the other and back. The technique is subtle, but it works to introduce a vague unease in the audience. Like the occasional Dutch tilts, it throws us ever so slightly off balance, mirroring Benjamín’s own confusion.

Young Benjamín begins investigating the rape and murder of a beautiful young woman, quickly becoming obsessed not only with finding her killer but with understanding the intense, undying love of her husband. The widower has taken to haunting the concourses of Buenos Aires’ railway stations, on the assumption that the prime suspect will have to pass through one of them sooner or later.

The film is framed and shot carefully but without fuss, with one glorious exception -- a camera circles a packed soccer stadium from a Goodyear height, then dives down into the crowd and, seemingly in the same take, finds our detective, who finds his quarry and gives chase.

It’s a thrilling scene that took months to choreograph, and it would have been wasted on a lesser film. Thankfully, this was not the case. The Secret in Their Eyes beat out the excellent French film The Prophet and critical favourite The White Ribbon to win the Academy Award for best foreign-language picture this year.

Benjamín forms one corner of an intriguing legal triangle. He demurely flirts with his new boss, for whom he feels a love so pure it seems to consume him. Then there is his partner, Pablo, played by Guillermo Francella. Like much of the cast of Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant!, Francella is a comic actor in a dramatic role, which provides yet another delicate layer of something’s-not-quite-right to the proceedings.

Pablo cheerfully admits to having a debilitating drinking problem, but also manages (while drunk!) to realize that a man on the run can change everything about himself except his passion. It’s one of several speeches (another deals with the examined life) that, even in subtitled English translation, will burn its way into your brain. (For more on the subtitles, see the story to the right.)

Much like the recent Swedish hit The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Secret in Their Eyes relies on an old photograph to jump-start the investigation. Benjamín sees someone looking askance at the murder victim in a group shot and never looks back. What’s more, we believe as strongly as he does; after all, if love at first sight can happen in this movie, why not guilt too?

The film’s setting places it at a major juncture in Argentina’s violent history. The death of President Juan Perón in July 1974, left the country open for conflict between left- and right-wing extremists and resulted in the 1976 coup and the subsequent Dirty War and disappearance of thousands of dissidents. For those familiar with “the disappeared,” The Secret in Their Eyes undoubtedly resonates, but there are enough clues that you won’t need a historical study guide.

The final product is difficult to define without hyphens. Meditative-thriller might be one classification to encompass a film in which murder shares the screen with such dialogue as: “Memories are all we end up with; at least pick the nice ones.” I also need a word to explain the mix of horror, revulsion and bitter satisfaction I felt in one important, revelatory scene. Given its success with portmanteau words, German would seem to be the place to look, but now I’m convinced that if such a term exists, it’s in Spanish.