British director Michael Winterbottom may be many things, but consistent isn’t one of them. Despite his prolific output, it’s impossible to know which version of the director will show up: the dry, subtly effective helmer of The Trip miniseries; the bold revisionist who adapted Tess Of The D’Urbervilles in India for Trishna; the composed, naturalist eye behind Everyday; or, less encouragingly, the indulgent provocateur of 9 Songs and tonal blunderbuss who wasted a fine cast in The Look Of Love.
Unfortunately, the Winterbottom helming The Face Of The Angel is the same man behind the insufferable 9 Songs. Any veneer of artistic boldness is wiped away by insufferable indulgence, demonstrating little genuine purpose beyond attracting attention through provocation and needless visual gimmickry and turning a potentially fascinating real-life murder investigation into an excuse for narcissistic self-meditation. The movie may be dedicated to the memory of Meredith Kercher, but the only person its director seems genuinely interested in exploring is himself.
[youtube id=”ag_I15RBl-0″]
The Face Of An Angel
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Rating: R
Release Date: June 19, 2015
The story is ostensibly a fictionalised examination of the Meredith Kercher murder through the eyes of an English film director as he slowly loses his mind while seeking inspiration for the most appropriate way of telling the story. The most oft-repeated theme is whether it is better for art to depict the literal truth or offer a fictionalised perspective through which truth can be interpreted, examined and perhaps eventually, clarified. The story does not attempt to untangle the Kercher case so much as look into the way it was reported and what it says about both those doing the reporting and those they were reporting to. Thomas, the director played by Goodbye Lenin‘s Daniel Brühl, is coming off the back of a flop and needs a hit to revitalise his career. A murder committed in the picturesque Tuscan city of Siena by an American student and her Italian boyfriend offers compelling material for his financiers, but he struggles to find an original take on a case around which most people seem to have already formed a version of the truth in their heads.
Turning a real-life murder into the story of a director’s creative crisis feels a little tasteless, but such issues could be easily overlooked had the movie any original insights into the situation and what it says about the social circumstances in which it played out. The media’s determination to spin their own versions of what happened is a potentially fertile source of inspiration, yet Winterbottom offers the idea little more than lip service. Supporting characters parrot on about the dividing line between truth and fiction, yet Thomas’ mental state is the real centre of attention. That one character even comments on this, suggesting the story shouldn’t be turned into that of a middle-aged director losing his way, highlights rather than mitigates that indulgence through commentary. Thomas isn’t even interesting enough to hold attention. His meandering through the streets of Siena, pontificating about parallels between the case and the Inferno section of Dante’s Divine Comedy (much to the bemusement of his backers), all the while hallucinating and doing copious quantities of drugs, is neither as deep or original as Winterbottom seems to think it is. There is none of the self-loathing or subversive humour which anchored Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation, the 2002 film to which Face Of An Angel owes a clear debt.
The cast is solid enough, though supporting characters struggle for definition in the wake of Winterbottom’s focus on Thomas, whom even the usually dependable Daniel Brühl cannot salvage into anything other than a tiresome mope. Kate Beckinsale’s Simone exists solely within the context of her relationship to him, while Genevieve Gaunt’s Amanda Knox analogue, Jessica Fuller, is never explored beyond other characters telling us what a media-savvy star she is supposed to be. The Kercher figure, Elizabeth Pryce (Sai Bennett), is an afterthought at best. Surprisingly, the one who emerges from the film with far and away the most credit is first-timer Cara Delevingne, who takes a nothing role as a twenty-something art student, Melanie, and infuses it with a liveliness and warmth all her own. There’s a valid argument that she is simply playing herself, but she manages to pack considerably more into her limited character than more experienced actors like Brühl and Beckinsale. The movie becomes more interesting and likeable every time she pops up, with none of it down to the staid writing and directing.
Outside Delevingne’s inspired casting, Winterbottom struggles to find any sort of spark to bring the movie to life. He dallies with themes he has tackled more successfully in movies past, but just as Thomas finds himself wandering aimlessly through Siena’s dark and foreboding streets, so too does Winterbottom repeatedly head down thematic and narrative blind alleys. The incessant meet-and-greets which take up so much of the movie’s running time feel like filler while the director tries to make up his mind which undercooked gimmick to deploy next, whether demonic hallucinations or thriller-ish hints at the secret motivations of a morbidly philosophical local, all reliant on a blunt musical score to overemphasize moments of intended impact. However questionable the taste of tackling a murder case still fresh in the memory, the story is one so interwoven with juicy strands of social and cultural commentary that it’s remarkable how little ends up being said. Entire movies could be built around the Kercher case’s sexual dynamics, the media’s depiction of women, or holistic connections to youthful hedonism in the modern age, yet the most interesting take Winterbottom can come up with is perfunctory, winking self-flagellation for his own lack of inspiration.