Review of The Dead Girl (2006) by Willis M — 31 Jan 2009

The Dead Girl is writer/director Karen Moncrieff's follow-up to her 2002's deubt, Blue Car. The dead Girl unfolds into five separate yet interconnected stories about people whose lives converge around the murder of a young woman.

The first story focuses on Arden (Toni Collette), a quiet loner who lives with her abusive mother. she finds a nube body and alerts the authorities, much to her mother's dismay. The second story revoles around Leah (Rose Byrne) a depressed forensics examiner who does the autopsy on the body. She insist that body belong to her long distant sister who went missing years ago, and resents the fact that her parents are still searching for her lost sister and won't accept that she is not coming back.

The Dead Girl turns out to be Krista,a prositute played by Brittany Murphy who was picked up hitchhiking by a serial killer. Meanwhile the thrid story centres on Ruth (Mary Beth Hurt), a bitter lonely wife who thinks she knows why her husband leaves for days and finds that he's collecting women's clothing and hiding them in a storage shed.

The film is filled wtih great preformances including the seriously impressive female preformances, with with Byrne and Marcia Gay Harden particularly effective in their respective roles. To me Mary Beth Hurt is such a wonder to watch. Each one of theses perfectly litte segents are so well written and so well acted, you can vision any one of these stories stretched out to feature length. It's is dark and depressing material, but watching the film sure isn't because your seeing such talented work.