Review of The Face of an Angel (2014) by Andrei D — 15 Jul 2015

For his next movie, Thomas(Daniel Bruhl) travels to Italy to research the trial of a young college student accused of killing her roommate in the historic city of Siena. His first contact is Simone Ford(Kate Beckinsale) who wrote the first book on the subject. Her only regret is that she missed on a chance to test drive a Maserati. She provides Thomas an introduction to tabloid reporters covering the trial.

With "The Face of an Angel," director Michael Winterbottom takes a barely fictional look at the Amanda Knox trial in Italy(he changes the names and setting but otherwise keeps all of the details intact), just as Thomas is told twice in the movie to tell a fictionalized version of the story. (I hope Thomas is not based on Winterbottom as boy is Thomas screwed up, snorting a ton of cocaine in the film.) While concerning various and sundry theories, Winterbottom just throws up his hands by not settling on any of them, framing that in a discussion of Dante's Divine Comedy as a way of contemplating the unknowable.