The Ending Of Nothing To Hide Explained

Sure, most of the bad blood at the conclusion of the what-if sequence in "Nothing to Hide" is banal. A lot of those problems aren't even really problems, just inevitable consequences of butting in on other people's privacy. But some of the conflicts are serious, and very much the sort of secrets we might actually want to know if our loved ones were keeping them from us.

The infidelity that Marie and Thomas are engaged in, for instance, is the kind of thing that generally must be faced head-on, for better or worse, if healthy relationships are to be pursued. The bitter truths that Ben would've learned about his friends' thinly-veiled homophobia are also better left out in the open, where he would get the opportunity to deal with them as a gay man. Ultimately, the conflict Charlotte and Marco would've gone through also would've strengthened their bond, allowing them to strip themselves of disguises and meet each other in a more truthful place.

The ending of "Nothing to Hide" is happy on the surface. But it is also an ending in which Léa is about to have children with a man who's cheating on her with two women at the same time, Ben is in a group of friends who might not accept him as much as he thinks they will, and Charlotte and Marco are still pretending not to see their own relationship problems. The film leaves us with the question of which truths are better left alone, and which ones are better being directly addressed.