La ragazza del lago

At first glance the synopsis might have suggested some similarities with the New Zealand film In My Father's Den, and indie film The Dead Girl. After all, the pace started to pick up when the body of a young woman is found by the lake (hence the title) of a small and quiet Italian town, with the story progressing like an investigative drama that made me wanted to scream Twin Peaks!

In essence, this film by Andrea Molaioli, based upon the novel by Karin Fossum, runs very much like how an investigations is set out to be, full of red herrings, half truths, deceit, together with plenty of doubt, and little leads to plough things forward. For that, I thought it captured the dilemma of an investigator really well, with Toni Servillo in excellent form as Commissario Sanzio, a stoic, no-nonsense police investigator who together with his small team, have to solve this strange case. If I may say so, it puts the audience into the thick of the action really well, with the ABCs of an investigation - Assume nothing, Believe nobody, and Check everything, superbly brought out.

And that started right from the beginning too, as things are not quite they seem, and I was quick to pass judgement on the film, thinking that it was an open and shut case too soon, and too obvious. For those who enjoy a good dose of investigative drama, then this film would be right up your alley. There are frustrations of course when you find yourself drawn into the events of the picture, working toward trying to solve the case before Sanzio does, but each time being thwarted, and going back to the drawing board if you had missed a potential lead, or had been blindsided and failed to pick up clues that the actors give out, akin to playing a game of Cluedo.

But those who don't enjoy wrecking your brains too much, fret not too. The story is rich enough not to dwell too much on the police work, deftly splitting its time to dig into a little more of its central characters so that they flesh out in more three-dimensional terms, rather than being flat. The ensemble cast deserves credit for making their characters believable, and hence all the more difficult when you try to weed out the possible suspects with clear motivations. In particular, we see more of Sanzio's personal life in the film, where he has to deal with a wife suffering from advanced dementia, and a growing teenage daughter (Guilia Michelini) with whom he sometimes fail to see eye to eye with. He may be tip top in the professional front, but on the personal end it does seem like he does require some assistance.

There would be those who might complaint that the ending was too convenient, but trust me having been there and done that, there are occasions when folks know their game is up, and resistance is just plain futile. To me, for personal reasons, this was as accurate a movie as can be that had brought out similar feelings during probes into what had happened, and you know what? A little eclectic techno music on the side does no wrong too!

'The Girl By The Lake" is a good mystery movie with several suspects and a detective with an insinuating style that gradually arrests your attention. It defies you to pick the murderer and keeps its secret until nearly the last scene, and is gorgeously photographed. The suspects backgrounds and possible motives are uncovered like layers of an onion, so towards the end of the picture you feel you are nowhere closer to a solution than when it started. In this respect it is a masterful screenplay and with an intelligent script. No complaints here, right?

Well, one small one. Why so much talking? Most of us appreciate good screen writing, but this picture had so much of it. Would have been nice to see some action or at least some scenes with some energy, but it's like reading a letter - all the words and sentences are in one tone of voice, with no emotional highs or lows to be found. The movie is saved from a lower rating by the efforts of Toni Servillo as the Police Inspector, a nondescript sort who showed a great deal of charisma and brought his character to life. I do not agree with a contributor who felt the support cast was amateurish as they were competent down to the least character.

This picture is worth a good look and is better than the website contributors give it credit for. The climax was not thrilling, but probably the way many murder cases end in the real world, matter-of-fact and not with guns blazing like in the movies.

A beautiful victim in a beautiful setting starts us off on an interesting who-dun-it, with suspects emerging by the handful for our world-weary detective to evaluate. The characters are all pretty interesting, each with a believable idiosyncrasy and one or two with a plausible motive. Flashbacks to the pretty victim's life and digressions about the detective's own less- than-happy family serve to keep some tension going, too.

But the resolution is a disappointment, both in terms of who-dun-it and the manner in which the suspect is discovered. Endings are never more important than in mysteries – a weak one makes us feel guilty for killing time. This "Girl" does just that.

I recently saw this at the 2008 Palm Springs International Film Festival. This is director Andrea Molaioli debut film and he comes out of the gate as a first time director with a very good film. The screenplay by Molaioli and Sandro Petraglia was adapted from the novel Don't Look Back by Norwegian novelist Karin Fossum and had been made into a mini series on Norwegian television in 2002. In this Italian setting, a young girl named Anna is found dead on the shore of a rural mountain lake, lying nude on her side with her clothes neatly arranged by her. Intitial suspects are the girl's boyfriend and a mentally slow man who lives nearby with his wheelchair bound elderly father and who first discovered the body and put his coat over it. A seasoned criminal investigator from the south, Inspector Giovani Sanzio (Toni Servillo), is called in to help local authorities to help solve the death. Once Sanzio enters the picture he is virtually in every scene and Servillo is excellent in the role. Director Molaioli gets the most from a fine supporting cast and this who-done-it takes several turns that keeps your interest peaked from beginning to end. Great cinematography from veteran photographer Ramiro Civita. I would give this an 8.0 out of 10 and recommend it.

I'm glad a movie was filmed in the region where I live! Even though we have always been almost forget by the rest of Italy, our place offers a breathtaking variety of landscapes perfect for filming. More and more directors are realizing that, and other movies are being filmed here at the present time. I found this movie kind of slow though,and I didn't like too much the fact that the main character spoke with a southern accent as well others in the movie speaking with accents other than the Fraulein (spoken in the province of Udine). You could tell it was a production from Rome. Next time make it more "local"! Anyway I liked the plot.