The Secret Woman Review
Director: Barbara Topsøe-Rothenborg
Date Created: 2026-08-28 17:45
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The Secret Woman Review: Directed by Barbara Topsøe-Rothenborg, the Danish thriller Den hemmelige kvinde stars Natalie Madueño as Louise Andersen/Helene Söderberg, with Claes Bang as Edmund, Pål Sverre Hagen as Joachim, Stina Ekblad as Caroline, Ingrid Bolsø Berdal as Iben Rask and Lars Simonsen as Aksel Söderberg. The film is adapted from Anna Ekberg’s novel, with Anders August also involved in the screenplay; the movie has a runtime of 1 hour and 58 minutes.
The Secret Woman Review
Netflix’s The Secret Woman starts off with Louise having what seems to be a very happy life in Norway’s island of Hidra, where she operates a café alongside her boyfriend Joachim. Her happy life changes when someone comes out with the claim that Louise is really Helene Söderberg, a woman from Denmark who went missing some time ago. After taking a DNA test, which proves that the terrifying scenario is true, Louise discovers that she has a family that she can’t even remember: a husband by the name of Edmund and a son called Alexander. She heads back to Denmark in order to find out why she left everything behind.
It is the question posed at the heart of the story of Louise which made the Danish film The Secret Woman intriguing to me: What happens when everyone knows who you are, but you fail to know yourself? It is a really scary proposition. In this case, Louise is not just searching for the mystery behind the missing woman; she is searching for the missing woman within herself. The revelation that she has a husband and child creates an interesting psychological dilemma in the sense that her life with Joachim did not lose its purposefulness just because she is Helene.
It is something that I liked more than the mystery in the film. Louise has developed a relationship with Joachim, has made herself a home, and has made an identity for herself, calling herself Louise. Now someone from another life comes along and tells her that she is not Louise but someone else. There is material here for a very complex film.
The only downside is that the Netflix film The Secret Woman does not take the concept further than it should have, as far as I would have liked. Louise makes for a more convincing character rather than a character of a thriller. Natalie Madueño is certainly one of the more likeable elements of the film for me. She makes Louise vulnerable enough so that her confusion is plausible, especially once she joins the world of Söderberg.
The issue lies in the fact that sometimes the script does not provide her with enough material to play with. Louise occupies herself with the investigation of her past throughout most of the movie; however, this investigation is too often made to be too convenient and on point. Everything that needs to be known is discovered right in time when it is needed by the plot, and everything that is related to her past is revealed just because the plot requires it.
That makes her quest less captivating than it ought to have been. I found it intriguing how different Louise is from Helene. She is not only seeking to get back the identity she once had but rather is slowly realising that the person she once was might have existed in an extremely unsettling environment. This makes her quest more emotionally driven than just out of curiosity. When the element of danger starts becoming more obvious, everything becomes clear to me.
Yet, the movie continues to tell me that Louise is endangered instead of letting me feel it. The character of Edmund could have been played by a much more compelling actor. Claes Bang is another actor whose performances I generally admire, and it is easy to understand why he was chosen to play Edmund. He has an air of menace about him that does not need any explanation. But the character of Edmund has been written way too simply.
This happens early enough so that throughout the movie, I never wasted time thinking whether he was trustworthy. This is a great issue since it is a thriller where the whole plot revolves around Louise’s ability to doubt everyone she encounters. Once Edmund becomes manipulative and controlling about the past, it becomes very clear what his intentions were.
I would have liked even more of an ambiguity from him. I was curious about the reasons behind Helene being with him and what her real relationship with him had been and why their family had become dysfunctional. Instead, Edmund becomes the suspicious husband of this film too many times. This applies to Edmund’s mother as well, Caroline. Stina Ekblad is a rather eerie character who always hovers around the family’s house, but she appears to be too much of a gothic-thriller prototype character.
It becomes all too predictable, which is how the Netflix Danish movie The Secret Woman lost me. The first part made me want to know more. Louise being Helene, having a family she has no memory of and having disappeared because of something much worse makes for interesting reading. However, as more details emerge, the plot becomes less mysterious than ever.
There are a number of hints that seem just a little too conveniently included in the story, as well as some revelations that would have been more shocking if not for the way in which the movie had set them up in advance. The investigation related to the family history of Helene, as well as the secrets concerning Edmund, and even the recovery of Louise’s memories should have all added up to make a tight psychological circle.
Instead, I found myself waiting for the characters to figure out things that I already knew about. The movie has an intriguing topic of human trafficking, but it didn’t use this idea in depth. Instead, it became part of the mystery.
With its almost two-hour length, Netflix’s The Secret Woman movie seems to run longer than necessary. There are certain shots which are meant to help create a mood, yet they do not contribute much to the development of the characters as well as to the solution of the mystery. In particular, I wished to see more interplay between Louise and Joachim. It is crucial for the development of the plot, since Joachim is the symbol of Louise’s past, while Helene’s family stands for her forgotten life.
Thus, Joachim often appears as the person who helps Louise find the answers from the outside perspective. It is a lost chance to use the conflict in identity as the emotional core of the whole film. Besides the question “Who am I?” Louise must ask herself, “Is my life of lesser value only because it does not belong to my previous self?”
Netflix The Secret Woman Review: Summing Up
However, I would not classify The Secret Woman as a total failure, since there are certain elements in the movie which do work. First of all, the concept is great; Natalie Madueño makes the main character sufficiently vulnerable to attract my attention, and Claes Bang makes Edmund a sufficiently creepy character. Moreover, there are several scenes in the movie which are truly uncomfortable, since Louise starts to understand that her forgotten past might be linked to something even more frightening than disappearance.
