In Her Skin (2009)
Rather compelling. And a knock out performance by one of the leads, the troubled young girl Caroline played by Ruth Bradley.
This is a real life story of a murder of a girl in Australia (and the production is Aussie, so sometimes the accents a bit think for an outsider). It strives for basic realism, so the acting and photography and editing are fairly straight forward. And well done.
Because of these very same things, the movie doesn't rise above. It depends on the story to make it special, and of course the story is sordid and scary, but it isn't actually so unusual in our murderous world. So things stay firmly rooted all along.
What you might expect after awhile is some insight into the girls, and the families around them, since this is almost entirely what the movie is about. In a more obvious way, the theme also centers on beauty and the opposite of beauty. The two girls, Caroline the overweight angry kid and Rachel the successful dancer kid, are opposites in almost every way. The way society makes judgments, and the way girls see themselves through society's lens, are very much what (apparently) led to the eventual violence.
Oddly enough, even though I like this, it isn't necessarily special enough to recommend. Maybe if the themes sound good, go for it. Or the idea of a simple, realistic glimpse of modern upper middle class Australia.
Rather compelling. And a knock out performance by one of the leads, the troubled young girl Caroline played by Ruth Bradley.
This is a real life story of a murder of a girl in Australia (and the production is Aussie, so sometimes the accents a bit think for an outsider). It strives for basic realism, so the acting and photography and editing are fairly straight forward. And well done.
Because of these very same things, the movie doesn't rise above. It depends on the story to make it special, and of course the story is sordid and scary, but it isn't actually so unusual in our murderous world. So things stay firmly rooted all along.
What you might expect after awhile is some insight into the girls, and the families around them, since this is almost entirely what the movie is about. In a more obvious way, the theme also centers on beauty and the opposite of beauty. The two girls, Caroline the overweight angry kid and Rachel the successful dancer kid, are opposites in almost every way. The way society makes judgments, and the way girls see themselves through society's lens, are very much what (apparently) led to the eventual violence.
Oddly enough, even though I like this, it isn't necessarily special enough to recommend. Maybe if the themes sound good, go for it. Or the idea of a simple, realistic glimpse of modern upper middle class Australia.