The Dead Girl
Written & directed by Karen Moncrieff
A cynic would say that the living women of The Dead Girl have it worse than the titular corpse. While the bloodied, ant-infested remains of murder victim Krista (Brittany Murphy) lie peacefully, even picturesquely, beneath a cornflower sky in a sun-bleached California desert canyon, surviving females face abuse, toxic relationships, bottomless grief and destitution. As the film reassembles her troubled, nomadic life and murder, Krista seems lucky to have finally escaped such horrors herself via death. Yet The Dead Girl imagines, with austere, poetic images and treacle-free performances, less fatal escapes for five women whose grim lives intersect directly or tangentially with Krista’s. Writer/director Karen Moncrieff’s five interconnected stories (told one-by-one in chapters) are starkly clear-eyed about the limits of transcendence; these aren’t Lifetime movie heroines, but their collective story of submerged identities and devastating discoveries ultimately isn’t a downer. Watching these women awake from stupors, staring the light of day head on, is viscerally empowering, regardless of their shaky futures.
Timid, homely, under the iron fist of her sermonizing convalescent mother (Piper Laurie, photocopying her signature role as Margaret White in Carrie), Arden (Toni Collette) can barely sneak out to chew on a sandwich. It’s during that brief respite from indentured servitude that she stumbles upon Krista’s body, thus far unidentified. When Arden subsequently becomes a local celebrity (secretly wearing a necklace snatched from Krista’s neck), she attracts the attention of a sexy, slightly creepy grocery boy (Giovanni Ribisi), who unearths her kinky proclivities and untapped bravery. Colette has played this character too many times before, but her sad-ugly-duckling awakening here is touching and genuinely bizarre. And her arid, laconic demeanor clicks perfectly with the desert landscape.
Leah (Rose Byrne) is a beautiful, somber medical examiner with a vested interest in identifying the young woman’s body that arrives in her lab: It may be the remains of her sister Tiffany, missing for 15 years despite the dogged search efforts of her parents (Mary Steenburgen and Bruce Davison). As long as hope survives for Tiffany, Leah isn’t allowed to grieve or move on; they’re a frozen, static family portrait waiting for Tiffany to reassume her place. With the possibility of that ordeal ending, Leah melts, brightens and opens up to an attractive coworker (James Franco) in a desperate, sadly beautiful thaw.
Languishing in a mumu in a lightless, trashy, wood-paneled house, naggy Ruth (Mary Beth Hurt) is suspicious about her frequently absent husband (Nick Searcy). Worse than a sexless marriage, theirs is full of beyond-the-pale secrets—which link her husband to dead prostitutes—that Ruth will uncover. As the cuckolded wife who boldly confronts how little she knows her husband, her marriage and herself, Hurt is funny, resilient and ultimately heartbreaking—especially when fixing hubby’s TV dinner in the toaster oven and lovingly setting up his tray.
Another woman forced to end years of denial is Melora (Marcia Gay Harden), Krista’s estranged mother, who arrives in Los Angeles in the wake of the murder and its investigation. She strikes up an odd fact-getting friendship with Rosetta (Kerry Washington), a prostitute who shared a hotel room (and more) with Krista. As she learns why Krista ran away and of her own complicity, Melora gets a second chance at motherhood not only with Krista’s toddler daughter, but with the broken, hard-edged Rosetta.
These subtle, thoughtful characterizations give extra emotional heft to the final portrait of Krista (remember her? oh, right, Brittany Murphy) herself—a playfully manic, self-destructive firecracker whose frail, wide-eyed, stringy-haired look is already corpse-like. Her final day—a struggle to deliver a stuffed animal to her own daughter with the help of a john (Josh Brolin)—is a tragic, sweet portrait of yearning and thwarted love.
