This foreign language film feels more like an extra long episode of a TV detective show, like the Italian version of Columbo or Poirot. It's fairly well done, but I don't have the slightest idea of why it was made. There's nothing noteworthy about the mystery, the performances, the dialog or the direction. I don't know what it's like in Italy, but you can see this kind of storytelling all over the place in America, from public television to basic cable. That's not much of knock as long as you go into The Girl by the Lake knowing you're not going to see anything all that new or different.
Commissario Sanzio (Toni Servillo) is summoned to a small Italian town when a young girl goes missing, only to see her turn up almost immediately. What keeps Sanzio in town is the body of a teenager (Alessia Piovan) found dead by the local lake. With the aid of two sidekicks (Nello Mascia and Fausto Maria Sciarappa) and a bystanding prosecutor (Sara D'Amario), Sanzio has to figure out if the murderer is the girl's overly attentive father (Marco Baliani), her boyfriend (Denis Fasolo) or someone else. He also has to determine if her death was connected to a secret the girl was keeping from everyone, all the while dealing with his own teenager daughter (Giulia Michelini) and mentally ill wife (Anna Bonaiuto).
The reason why I say this feels like a TV episode is that only one of Sanzio's sidekicks actually does anything at all, while the other one and the prosecutor are nothing more than window dressing. Yet, the movie establishes the relationships between those two and Sanzio far more than is deserved by their parts in the story. It's as if they're recurring characters who've been important in previous episodes but don't have much to do in this one. And the film plops us down into the middle of Sanzio's family problems, again like it's a storyline being picked up from earlier in the season.
Emphasizing this small screen sensibility is that there's nothing exceptional, or even potentially exceptional, about The Girl by the Lake. I've got no real complaints with any aspect of it and did like it, but there's nothing complex or fantastic about the mystery, nothing striking about the acting and nothing compelling about either the filmmaking or the storytelling. I can't think of anything that would distinguish this from those British mysteries shown on Masterpiece Theater. If you like that sort of thing, you'll probably enjoy this movie. You just won't enjoy it much more than what you can see on TV.
This was adapted from a novel, so perhaps something didn't translate to the screen. Or maybe there's something in the tale and its telling that is relevant to Italian society and goes right over my head. Regardless, The Girl by the Lake is a fine bit of work. I just wish I knew why someone thought it was worth being made into a movie.
Commissario Sanzio (Toni Servillo) is summoned to a small Italian town when a young girl goes missing, only to see her turn up almost immediately. What keeps Sanzio in town is the body of a teenager (Alessia Piovan) found dead by the local lake. With the aid of two sidekicks (Nello Mascia and Fausto Maria Sciarappa) and a bystanding prosecutor (Sara D'Amario), Sanzio has to figure out if the murderer is the girl's overly attentive father (Marco Baliani), her boyfriend (Denis Fasolo) or someone else. He also has to determine if her death was connected to a secret the girl was keeping from everyone, all the while dealing with his own teenager daughter (Giulia Michelini) and mentally ill wife (Anna Bonaiuto).
The reason why I say this feels like a TV episode is that only one of Sanzio's sidekicks actually does anything at all, while the other one and the prosecutor are nothing more than window dressing. Yet, the movie establishes the relationships between those two and Sanzio far more than is deserved by their parts in the story. It's as if they're recurring characters who've been important in previous episodes but don't have much to do in this one. And the film plops us down into the middle of Sanzio's family problems, again like it's a storyline being picked up from earlier in the season.
Emphasizing this small screen sensibility is that there's nothing exceptional, or even potentially exceptional, about The Girl by the Lake. I've got no real complaints with any aspect of it and did like it, but there's nothing complex or fantastic about the mystery, nothing striking about the acting and nothing compelling about either the filmmaking or the storytelling. I can't think of anything that would distinguish this from those British mysteries shown on Masterpiece Theater. If you like that sort of thing, you'll probably enjoy this movie. You just won't enjoy it much more than what you can see on TV.
This was adapted from a novel, so perhaps something didn't translate to the screen. Or maybe there's something in the tale and its telling that is relevant to Italian society and goes right over my head. Regardless, The Girl by the Lake is a fine bit of work. I just wish I knew why someone thought it was worth being made into a movie.