Product: The Dead Girl (2006)
Rating: 4.0
Better and Deeper than a CSI Episode
The blurb on this DVD jacket implies the movie is a forensic science mystery. This is very misleading. Don't get this movie if that would be your sole interest in it. Yes, a body is discovered here, and there is a scene or two showing the Medical Examiner probing the corpse for clues. But these scenes are minor moments in the film. This movie is essentially about the transformations wrought in the people surrounding the dead girl.It's all women who are shown being touched by the death. So for some viewers, that might skew this movie in the direction of being a "chick flick." But the film is actually in a genre all its own, beyond classification.In the sort of flat commentary that's included in the bonus materials, filmmaker Karen Monrieff steers us to the conclusion that these are stories about redemption. She suggests that the transformations catalyzed by the girl's death are all positive ones. One proposed subtitle for the film is: "One Life Ends; Six Others Begin." I'm not so sure about that though.All the women depicted do start from utterly bleak places. Possibly the worst condition of initial entrapment is seen in the vignette starring Toni Collette and Piper Laurie. Laurie plays the ultimately controlling mother who is grinding her caretaking daughter into dust in the suffocating closeness of their dingy, curtained house. When Collette is the one to discover the dead body in a nearby field, the resulting notoriety she gets brings her into contact with the outside world. Specifically, it brings her the attentions of a store clerk who has a morbid interest in serial killers. The two unworldly, childlike adults tentatively work their way towards a romance.However, it's difficult to be convinced that this will be a turn-for-the-better for Collette in the long run. Her boyfriend seems to be all too fascinated with the details of serial killings. One gets the feeling she might be exchanging a metaphorical entombment for a literal one.So while I don't find all these vignettes to be necessarily life-affirming, I did find them all to be absorbing and worth watching. The final vignette tracing back to show the dead girl's fate is especially touching.The acting is realistic and inspired throughout. But the photography is truly brilliant. Much of the drama is filmed using appropriately dim lighting. But then a unique outlining effect is used at key moments. The actor's faces are limned in light. They become silhouettes, unknowable quantities hung against a universal background glow.