Many a murder mystery begins with the discovery of a corpse — and very often it’s the corpse of a young woman. For some reason, that seems to excite writers, filmmakers and audiences to pursue the disentanglement of the mystery and find out who killed her and why.
The Dead Girl, too, begins with the discovery of a young woman’s corpse. Then it proceeds to investigate events surrounding her death, but not in a way you’d expect. The film is divided into five separate sections, each something close to a short story — and each deals with a person or people related in some way to the death. But this is by no means a straightforward mystery. It’s not about joining the dots of a whodunnit. It’s less about how and why the woman died and more about what the girl’s death means in several different lives. The central mystery is perhaps the mystery of human nature itself — and how lives can unravel so easily.
The first section has to do with the person (played by Toni Colette) who discovers the body and what that event sparks in her life. Another has to do with a woman who works in a morgue and who comes to some conclusions about the corpse. It’s not always obvious at first what such people have to do with the dead girl, but gradually their connections become clear.
The Dead Girl is written and directed by Karen Moncrieff and it’s good to see a woman’s name after the relevant credit on screen. There are too few woman directors and/or scriptwriters. Were there more, we might be able to solve the mystery of whether they would provide us with movies different in any substantial way from the movies made by men.
One major school of critical theory is based on the way the male gaze structures the way we see and experience movies, but it’s not clear whether women directors necessarily bring a different kind of gaze to the screen. The likes of Agnès Varda, Julie Taymor, Mira Nair and, within Hollywood, Sofia Coppola and Norah Ephron have certainly tried — but they are a distinct minority. Less than 10% of American directors are women and they tend to get the romantic comedies and never the big-budget action movies. Perhaps the conventions of mainstream filmmaking (and the prejudices of the powerbrokers, despite several of them being women) are just too entrenched at the moment.
Obviously one can’t say what The Dead Girl would have looked like had it been directed by a man. It may have looked more like The Black Dahlia, say, which also revolves around the corpse of a dead girl and was directed by Brian DePalma — but then that’s a genre picture with all the baggage that comes with such films. At any rate, in narrative terms, The Dead Girl does something different to the usual murder mystery and one gets the feeling that it has more of an interest in the complexities of life and selfhood (and the abuse of women) than many other movies.
The other movie of the week, The Lookout, also takes an unusual angle on crime. Its central figure, Chris, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, has lost his memory in a car accident. He still suffers from major gaps, having to provide himself with written instructions to get through the basic steps of the day. He also works in a bank (as a janitor), which makes him the perfect collaborator for a bunch of would-be bank robbers.
This is more of a character study than a plot-driven heist movie, though it certainly ratchets up the tension once the robbery part gets going. At its centre is a marvellous performance from Gordon-Levitt, who brings to his roles an intelligence and vulnerability most (male) actors simply can’t produce. From Mysterious Skin to Brick to this movie, we can see him just getting better and deeper with each major role. He’s one to watch — sure to develop into the kind of actor who can make you go and see a movie just because he’s in it.
Written and directed by Scott Frank, The Lookout has a feeling of simple, down-home realism without any flamboyant flourishes — though it also has a nice line in subtle humour. Shot (by Alar Kivilo) with austere elegance, all its elements work together seamlessly and it makes for very engaging and touching entertainment. The protagonist may have a problem with forgetting, but The Lookout is by no means forgettable.