L'affaire Jessica Fuller

Barbie Latza Nadeau's novel based on a true event has been transformed (or mutated) into a screenplay by Paul Viragh and the result as directed by Michael Winterbottom is a fine scenic tour of Sienna, Italy – and little else.

The story is based on true events - a journalist (Kate Beckinsale) and a filmmaker (Daniel Brühl) lose themselves in a notorious murder case they are covering – the controversial case of a American student accused of murder (the victim in truth, one Meredith Kercher) in Italy. Somehow the story gets lost in translation but if you can get past the fact that this is more of a fantasy film than reportage portions of can be entertaining. It does allow a primarily Italian cast to look great and decorate the already visually stunning sites of Sienna.

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.

Having, previously to seeing the film, read all four of the user reviews on IMDb.com - all of which expressed some degree of negative criticism of the film - I went to see The Face of an Angel somewhat apprehensive about what to expect. What had peeked my interest was that I'd also heard that this was more a film about a filmmaker struggling to discover what he believed to be an underlying 'truth' about the main female characters involved in the murder, as opposed to the 'good girl' / 'bad girl' sensationalism which he saw the tabloid media as focusing on. This, to me, sounded to be of far more interest than a movie merely purporting to solve or throw further light on the crime would have been. And, happily for me, that's how it transpired. As I watched I was fascinated by how the main protagonist (Thomas) had to wrestle with decision making in aspects of his personal life as well as in finding some way of telling the murder trial story as he thought it should be told. I found the acting and directing to be more than adequate and that there was more than one 'face of an angel' to add to the film's appeal. I enjoyed the film so much I saw it a second time the next day. Recommended. 7/10.

I have absolutely no idea how I came with the idea of watching this movie. As soon as it started I immediately understood that it was about the Amanda Knox case even though they use different names. So I thought it would be interesting to watch a movie about that. But what a disappointed that turned out to be. The story goes back and forth between the life of the journalists and the case itself. Difficult to follow and also extremely boring. Not that the actors were bad or so. They were all believable in their roles. But the story was just too boring and badly written. At one point I was battling not to fall asleep and at the end I just lost the battle. In a case like that I would normally just rewind until the part I fell asleep but with this movie I could not care less. I don't even want to know how it ended, too boring to waste anymore of my time with 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.