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THE DEAD GIRL
Written & Directed by: Karen Moncrieff.
Produced by: Tom Rosenberg, Henry Winterstern, & Gary Lucchesi.
Director of Photography: Michael Grady.
Editor: Toby Yates.
Released by: First Look.
Country of Origin: USA. 94 min. Rated R.
With: Toni Collette, Rose Byrne, Mary Beth Hurt, Marcia Gay Harden, Brittany Murphy, Kerry Washington, Piper Laurie, Giovanni Ribisi, James Franco, & Mary Steenburgen.

Karen Moncrieff (Blue Car) is an exciting director, interested in telling stories about women – women on the fringes. Her second film is a series of vignettes, each exploring how violence against women has an insidious effect on whole communities. Starting off is “The Stranger,” where Toni Collette finds the body of a young woman and becomes a local celebrity, which somehow enables her to break free from her physically and mentally abusive disabled mother played menacingly by Piper Laurie. Collette has gotten quite good at playing the depressed woman with her long drawn face, and here again she is able to relay deep sadness and depression.

In the second piece, Leah (Rose Byrne), a coroner, believes the dead girl in her lab is her long, lost missing sister who disappeared 15 years ago. Her parents (Mary Steenburgen and Bruce Davison) refuse to give up hope while Leah no longer wants to be the sister of a missing girl. Her life has been on hold and she is ready for it to start and sees this corpse as her new beginning.

In “The Wife,” Mary Beth Hurt (where has she been?) is caught in a verbally abusive and miserable marriage even after she happens upon her husband’s secret. Watching this segment is difficult; the wife has a chance to break free, but would rather endure life of guilt than to put herself through the agony of starting over with the stigma of her husband’s crimes.

Marcia Gay Harden stars as Melora, the mother of the dead girl, searching for answers as to why her daughter ran away years earlier. She discovers from Rosetta (Kerry Washington), the prostitute who lived with and loved her daughter, that her husband sexually abused Krista (Brittany Murphy). Melora is mortified, trying to convince herself (and the audience) that she did not know what was going on.

The final story, “The Dead Girl,” connects all of the segments, with Brittany Murphy in her best performance since Girl Interrupted. Murphy infuses Krista with a sense of wanting to create a better life for her and her daughter, yet understanding her limitations. Murphy plays the “wild girl” very well, yet you get a sense she has matured as an actress. The wildness of Krista has a touch of restraint, revealing her beleaguered life.

A talented storyteller, Moncrieff gets nuanced performances from the actors working with very difficult material. The Dead Girl clearly gets better as it goes along, when the focus starts to hone in on who this dead girl is and her fate. Marcia Gay Harden and Kerry Washington give the strongest performances in the film’s most well-written piece, but the entire ensemble is top rate.

Clearly, Moncrieff’s wants the audience to think hard and remember that violence against women has become so commonplace and pervasive we have become immune to it. Showing its consequences across generations and class, The Dead Girl succeeds in questioning a society of men and women – who are the perpetrators and who are the accomplices?

Melissa Silverstein, a writer on women & popular culture and online editor for The Women's Media Center
December 29, 2006