Knight at the Movies Archives
Karen Moncrieff's dark mystery is elevated by its galvanizing performances, Maria Maggenti's attempt at a gay Woody Allen movie
is less than delightful -- much less
Two out of four ain’t bad.  That’s roughly my score for the four segments that make up The Dead Girl, writer-director Karen
Moncrieff’s feature on the life and death of the unfortunate title character which is finally getting a Chicago run beginning this Friday.  
The movie – in which a series of characters are randomly connected through the murder of the title character – is a complete downer
(in my memory the entire thing is shot in shades of dung) but it has many moments of acting bravura that help to elevate it beyond
its gruesome subject matter.  Audiences that love tough, flinty, unforgiving movies –
Requiem for a Dream, Dancer in the Dark, or Last
Exit to Brooklyn
, say – may find a lot to admire in The Dead Girl.

Moncrieff, herself an actor with a lot of TV drama credits, previously wrote and directed the indie Blue Car and proved with that film
that she’s going to make movies that actors hungry for chunky, memorable parts are going to want to be a part of.  In
The Dead Girl
Moncrieff has assembled a dream cast that runs the gamut from Givonanni Ribisi to Piper Laurie.  The four segments of the film (it’s
basically four short films that eventually circle back to the first one) are set in and amongst familiar, gritty southern California
locations – a wasteland of cheap motels, filthy truck stops, and endless dessert where it’s easy to imagine a serial killer having no
trouble going undetected for years.  

Toni Collette as Arden takes a walk out into this bleak vista one morning to escape the brutal taunts of her vicious invalid mother
(Laurie) and finds the decomposing body of the murdered girl whose identity we’ll discover in the film’s final segment.  Collette, who
seems to be either in a trance or mildly retarded – it’s never really clear – steals a necklace off the body and hides it.  After
reporting the death and being featured on the news she agrees to a late night rendezvous with a grocery store bag boy (Ribisi).  
Ribisi, playing another of his disturbing characters (he is like the younger generation’s Brad Dourif), soon has talked a willing
Collette into recreating a fantasy, S&M version of what might have happened to the murdered girl.

I wasn’t sure how the picture could recover from this creepy, off putting vignette but it slowly comes back in the second segment in
which Leah (Rose Byrne), a young woman in the coroner’s office who does the autopsy is secretly hopeful that the body is that of her
sister who disappeared years earlier.  Her need to have closure in order to move on with her life and a burgeoning romance with cutie
pie Derek (James Franco) however, is circumvented by her mother’s (Mary Steenburgen) determination to not give up hope.

Then the movie kicks into high gear thanks to a riveting performance from an almost unrecognizable Mary Beth Hurt as the sour,
religious wife of a man who disappears for days and nights on end leaving the wife to tend to one of those forgotten storage
facilities (not unlike the one in Silence of the Lambs).  The mostly silent husband endures the taunts of the wife, who suspects that
he is having sex with prostitutes and it slowly dawns, is perhaps up to something much more sinister.  Hurt gives this harridan her all
– yet the bitterness and abuse are commingled with a desperate loneliness and love for her silent husband – and though her actions
later in the segment are unconscionable they are by that point understandable.  Hurt, who has consistently been under rated, is
mesmerizing.

Finally we arrive at the story of the poor put upon dead girl, Krista (Brittany Murphy) and here the film, which details the last days of
this pretty but tough little cookie, reaches its emotional height.  Krista’s story is told through flashbacks after her murder when her
estranged mother (Marcia Gay Harden) comes to identify her body and try to find out what happened.  It’s an all too familiar hard
luck story of a pretty runaway teenager quickly descending into prostitution and drug abuse.  But Harden’s performance, and those
of Murphy and Kerry Washington as Murphy’s lesbian lover and friend, redeem and flesh out the familiarity of the material.

By that point, the movie’s theme of despair and human venality commingled with desperate loneliness might seem overwhelming.  
Certainly in the hand of lesser actors Moncrieff’s bleak movie would be a complete buzz kill.  But with these wonderful performers,
The Dead Girl offers some unforgettable moments and its enthralling to see actors throw all caution to the wind in creating such
desperate characters.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Samantha leaves the opera loving Allegra after nine months because she’s not sure she’s really a lesbian and wants to try men
again.  Allegra (Elizabeth Reaser), bereft but available, quickly falls into an affair with Philip (Justin Kirk) after warning him that she’s
a lesbian at heart.  To prove it she can’t resist a simultaneous affair with the daffy blonde haired investment broker Grace (Gretchen
Mol) who really wants to be a glass blower.  Then Allegra discovers that Philip and Grace are exes.

This is the set up for
Puccini for Beginners, a brittle relationship comedy that tries way too hard for sophisticated screwball.  It’s
been written and directed by Maria Maggenti, perhaps best known for her previous indie effort,
The Incredibly True Adventure of 2 Girls
in Love
.  Puccini is set in the New York world of arts and letters (everyone’s a writer or professor or has artistic aspirations) but for all
their erudite blather, none of the characters or their various “wacky” relationship troubles are particularly involving.  Though the
movie is enacted by a pretty to look at, gay friendly cast (nearly everyone on screen has played gay at least once before) it never
catches fire.  I am always happy to see Kirk (familiar from his work as Mary Louise Parker’s ne’er-do-well brother on Showtime’s
“Weeds” and as the lead in the film version of
Angels in America) and Jennifer Dundas, as Reaser’s best friend, in anything but even
they can’t do much with such wilted material and based on the evidence, the film’s tagline, “A love triangle of operatic proportions”
is, to put it kindly, a bit of an overstatement.
Dark and Undelightful:
The Dead Girl-Puccini For Beginners
Expanded Edition of 2-7-07 Windy City Times Knight at the Movies Column
By Richard Knight, Jr.