The Dead Girl (2006)
This was a damn depressing movie. Not really what I usually go in for, but with some good moment...even if it took some trugging to get to them.
To be fair, I'm not this movie's intended audience. I'm the guy who hates
Repo men (2010) because of the ending.
WARNING: "Repo men" spoilers below
Jude Law's character have gone though some impossible feats to get him and the love interest the happy ever after. Only, we discover that thirty minutes earlier, when he hit his head, he fell into a coma and has been dreaming the happy ending. The girl's dead and he's a vegetable.
Jude Law's character have gone though some impossible feats to get him and the love interest the happy ever after. Only, we discover that thirty minutes earlier, when he hit his head, he fell into a coma and has been dreaming the happy ending. The girl's dead and he's a vegetable.
The movie itself is divided into five parts, each separated from the others by titlecard depicting the relationship the protagonist has to either the girl or the murderer. For there's a dead girl. Toni Collette finds her in the first scene. She plays a woman living with her verbally abusive mother. When she reports the body to the police she gets mobbed by reporters and
OH HOLY ****, IT'S RIBISI!
Is this man incapable of NOT playing a skeevy basterd?
Anyway, he asks her out on a date, she wants him to rape her, she leaves the mother, story over. And that's the problem I have with this movie. It's like
Love Actually (2003) in that it tries to tell multiple stories, but whereas Love weaves the stories into one another, this keeps them utterly separated. When a story's over, we never hear from that character again. I know the focus is the girl, but the stories ends so abruptley that I never felt that we were told a complete story. Except, again, for the girl's. There's not enough time spent with each character to get to know them or care for them.
Except for two of them. Which were the two parts I actually liked. Both are very well acted and during the few moment we have to get to know them they get alot across. In the chapter titled sister we meet Leah, a college student who's sister dissapeared 15 years ago. The parents are still putting up flyers and collecting info, which means that the daughter they still have never got to grieve or move on, as the mother still believe that the other daughter's out there somewhere. The actress playing Leah does a great job in portraying a girl who wants to move on but feels so guilty over giving up on her sister. And there's some James Franco in this, so YAY, levity.
The second to last chapter follows Marcia Gay Harden playing the mother of the dead girl and her attempt to map out her daughter's final days. This is also very well acted and as she discovers more about her daughter she recives several emotional gut-punches that puts her on her ass.
At the end of things, this is a one and done for me. Some really good acting, some good pieces of story, but not somthing I feel needs a rewatch. I don't know if this sounds like a posetive or negative review. I feel it's mixed emotionally, just like I am when it comes to this movie. I do recommend you watch this, at least for the acting which is good almost throughout.