My Baby's (Finally) Got a 'Secret'

By now, it's not quite a secret that Madonna's recent documentary, I'm Going To Tell You a Secret, is being released on DVD June 6. (Okay, no more "secret" puns.)

The film, famously rejected by the Cannes Film Festival and forced down a long and winding road of distribution woes, premiered on MTV last October. While certainly no Truth or Dare, I don't know if being relegated to basic cable TV is what this doc deserved.

Billed as a look behind the scenes of 2004's Re-Invention Tour, the movie valiantly strives to be a companion piece to Truth, showing us how Madonna has grown spiritually since the bottle-fellating days of yore. Less a sequel than a footnote to the 1991 landmark, however, Secret nonetheless does a serviceable job of providing snapshots of the important players in Madonna's life, from hubby Guy and Her adorably irascible kids to the dancers on the tour. The latter inclusion seems to be an attempt to shoehorn Truth into this new context, but, regrettably, the viewer is not allowed to linger on any personality too long.

And until we get a DVD of the Re-Invention Tour, we'll have to settle for our bootleg videos and the oddly-edited snippets featured in this doc. The chills-inducing preview for the doc MTV aired during the 2005 VMAs, thirty seconds of Her performing Nobody Knows Me, encapsulated the film's most exciting and arguably more powerful moments: the showmanship. The full tour, though, deserves its own feature, devoid of camera tricks and liberal slicing of footage. How, pray tell, am I supposed to review the show for my next column, a retrospective of Madge's previous six tours?

Madonna fans are used to not getting Her tours immediately on DVD - or even at all. The iconic Blond Ambition never made it past laserdisc, save for segments included in Truth or Dare. And not only has The Virgin Tour languished exclusively on VHS for 20 years, it has the added insult of being bereft of three numbers (Angel, Borderline, and Burning Up).

As yet another Madonna-related artifact to put in the time capsule, this film is revelatory in its creators' (Madonna, director Jonas Akerlund, et al.) credo to show Madonna's current headset. Some will find it heavy-handed and almost preachy, but, taken as a whole, being Madonna, we know it's a performance. Just imagine Madge as circus barker, crying, "Come for the music, stay for sermons on 'the Light'!"

I'll happily take what we can get on June 6.