The Face of an Angel

Only one-thirds into the movie did I realize what it was supposed to be: a multi-layered, poetic piece with lofty characters. I should've gotten the hint from the opening scene and the narrative prose throughout the movie. Unfortunately it all ended up as too pretentious and cannot even be filed under the pool of psychological thrillers.

It's got a lot of lost potential; we've got some good actors caught in their bad moments, as if they couldn't afford another take. It was difficult to empathize with any of the characters. Eventually I got tired of watching Thomas (Daniel Brühl) going on impulsive snog fests with Simone and sniff cocaine because god knows why... it's hard to figure out what kind of character he's supposed to be. The only two characters true-to-form were Edoardo (Valerio Mastandrea) and Melanie (Cara Delevingne), and I'd have to give a special mention to Delevingne mostly for actually doing well in her first speaking part in a feature film.

The Amanda Knox saga, on which this is based, is an incredibly compelling real-life thriller. It has all the elements--xenophobia, exotic location, pretty people, legal saber-rattling, murder most foul, the irrationality of the enraged populace, wrongful conviction and a compelling heroine who wins in the end.

Now, how do you take THAT and make this incredibly dull, meandering film? I often criticize films that are "Hollywood-ed up," but here, they could have used some Hollywood attention to character development and pacing. The script is limp. The characters are laconic. Nothing much happens. The director has done better. The actors have done better. One day, someone will make a truly compelling film on this remarkable tale. This is not it.

I am glad I gave this film a chance and watched it til the end as I was pleasantly surprised with how it framed the murder of Meredith Kercher and its media coverage. The film manages to portrait the multi-dimensional aspects of the media, student life in Italy, and the various people affected by this crime. Most important and touching was that Meredith Kercher was given a human face and was not lost in the shadow of Amanda Knox's celebrity/villain representations provided in previous films/documentaries.

Prolific filmmaker Michael Winterbottom takes meta-textual approach of the Amanda Knox murder saga in The Face of an Angel. An American student in Italy has been accused of murdering her English roommate with her Italian boyfriend which has caused a media frenzy. There is a lot of speculation based on circumstantial evidence gathered by incompetent police.

Thomas (Daniel Brühl) a filmmaker on a downward spiral both professionally and in his personal life is sent to Siena, Italy to observe the trial as material for a true life crime thriller. He is aided by a Rome based American journalist Simone (Kate Beckinsale) who provides him with expert background information.

Thomas also meets another international student who also works as a bartender, Melanie (Cara Delevingne) who shows him the sordid side of Siena. They go to parties, score drugs and he has visions fuelled by this messy, fuzzy life as well as his interest in Dante's The Divine Comedy.

Whereas other tabloid journalists are just interested in sex and sleaze as a route to make money rather then finding out the truth of this murder case, Thomas wants to develop a script for a medieval morality play.

The film starts off interestingly enough, Thomas is the stranger in town intending to do the victim justice rather than chase a meal ticket but the film gets less involving as the character of Thomas gets lost in Siena. Winterbottom might be too self righteous here about the media but the film still arouses curiosity.

The Face of an Angel: A film about a guy making a film about a book about a headlining controversial murder of a student studying abroad in Italy that points suspicions toward her roommate and the roommate's lover.

In reality, the 'headlining' murder is that of Meredith Kercher, more well known to the public as the trial of Amanda Knox. The Face of An Angel is not a reenactment of the media's coverage of this case, rather a creative interpretation told through the eyes of a journalist Simone and documentary maker named Thomas as he chases the story as it unfolds.

Within the film are several quotes that reveal the true errors in the film's ways, even if its intents were commendable. Firstly, it is more fictional than fact and is not a true crime investigation of the murder, as one character states: "If you're gonna make a movie, make it a fiction. You cannot tell the truth unless you make it a fiction."

This is true of the murder of Meredith Kercher. No one truly knows what went on in that bedroom. So much hearsay has transpired that to claim to tell the truth through a creative interpretation would lead to certain failure.

It is like the director Michael Winterbottom and screenwriter Paul Viragh were aware of the obvious tropes that would certainly damn the film. As one piece of dialogue uttered by the journalist of the film, played by Daniel Brühl, reveals: "It's not about 'whodunnit'…there are so many angles, how to organize it in a meaningful way, it's important that its a story based on truth, but i want to do something that transcends that, that its not just a simple reconstruction…"

In trying to avoid those cliché ideas, The Face of an Angel fails in an unexpected but admirable manner. It is unable to grasp the true essence of the murder that captivated the world in being completely unstructured and focused upon Thomas.

There are aspects of the film that work well and reveal a softer more intriguing side of the investigation. The media's preoccupation with not-Amanda when the true attention should be on the victim, who the tabloid journalists in the film say 'fade into the background.' The focus upon sex and murder due to its innate ability to sell newspapers and compulsive way in which the press perpetuates the images of the key figures in the case. The protagonists frustrations with this simplistic mindset yields a more complete view of the girls as students and people, and does not reduce them to facsimiles.

It is an interesting attempt and the cinematography of the scenes had a certain mood that was effective. But ultimately it fails to showcase a greater message, and the pretentious desire to incorporate Dante Alighieri's source material is off-putting.

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