L'affaire Jessica Fuller

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.

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 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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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.

Some will say that t is still too soon to be making a film about a murder case that shocked the World and they are arguably right. I did not know this was about that until I started watching it and will judge it as a film in its own rights. Anyway Daniel Bruhl plays a film maker who has had a run of bad luck and wants to make a film about the murder case and he teams up with a journalist played by Kate Beckinsale; she has been following the case from the start in Sienna.

The case is ongoing as the film develops and Bruhl's character gets completely immersed and for those that followed the case there will be moments of déjà vu through out. There are many references to Dante's 'Divine Comedy' too and some rather awkward dream sequences.

Is it any god though? Well I was not disinterested at all but it was still not riveting. Everyone puts in a good performance although some are a bit stereo typed – especially some of the journalists. So it is above average but I could not get away from the fact that for some people this case is still a living hell and that cast a pall over any 'enjoyment' (if that is the right word) that I could get from this production – hence my rating but I would not try to dissuade anyone from seeing this especially if you are fan of either of the leading actors as they both serve their trade well.