The Girl in the Park (2007)
A mother, enduringly traumatized by the disappearance of her three-year old daughter 15 years ago, has cut herself off from her ex-husband and son. However, when a troubled young woman with a checkered past enters her life, old psychic wounds painfully resurface, as does the illogical and increasingly irrational hope that the young woman may be the daughter she lost so long ago.
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Good story, Not enough for a whole film
Crappy film
It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
Haunted by the disappearance of her 3 year old daughter 15 years ago, Julia Sandburg (Sigourney Weaver) can't find any joy even with his son Chris (Alessandro Nivola) and his fiancé Celeste (Keri Russell) being pregnant. She helps Louise (Kate Bosworth) when she steals a pair of sunglasses and gives her some money later on. Louise awakens something in Julia, but it is obvious that Louise can't be trusted. Julia feels a connection to Louise and it soon becomes a question of whether Julia is actually her child Maggie.It's a slow moving indie. Sigourney Weaver brings her A game. Her performance keeps the attention in a tense understated manner. Kate Bosworth is well cast in this. She has a blend of innocence and vulnerability as well as something darker underneath. It's not certain what her true motives are most of the time. One can really see the pain on Weaver while not being able to pinpoint Bosworth's character. There is this uneasy tension throughout as Julia adopts the mother role to Louise. There are some missing scenes in this movie. My logic mind kept asking the movie to do a paternity test ala Maury.
This movie is one that I have watched many times, often with a cup of tea. I'd say this movie is for those who want to watch something full of suspense, drama and questions.I could re-watch this constantly yet for some I can see that it can be considered to be too 'slow' for certain audiences.The movie was well done by the various actors and actresses and its obvious that a lot of research was prepared before the final publication of the movie - such as the emotions to do with bereavement, not knowing the truth and not being able to let go of the past.It's well worth a watch!
Another movie which owes a lot to Sigourney Weaver's talent.She excels in portraying mothers with a strong guilty feeling (see "a map of the world" ).She is sadly unsupported by the rest of the cast ,but one must write that their caricatured bourgeois straight characters (particularly the daughter-in-law and Weaver's listless husband) throw the movie off balance.All that concerns the mother ,desperately trying to recreate a dear one gone for a long time (when she was a little girl) ,is sometimes interesting.It does not renew the subject ,as old as the hills (Hitchcock's "Vertigo"(1958) ;Feyder's "Le Grand Jeu"(1934);Claude Miller's "Mortelle Randonnée" (1983) Losey's " secret Ceremony" (1968):Losey's movie depicting a "mother"/"daughter" relationship is similar to "the girl..." if we reverse the roles).Best moment:Weaver thanking her family for welcoming "Maggie" .
My only criticism of this film is in the casting of the son, Chris. He is shorter than Sigourney Weaver and this is genetically impossible. That said, all the actors did a great job. And just HOW did SW look so convincing as both a thirty and a fifty-year old? Some credit to the make up department, sure - but it was the subtle change in the set of her jaw, the rigidity of her body vs fluidity in the early scenes ... The fact that the secondary characters aroused curiosity added to the atmosphere - someone els has complained that their potential stories were not developed. But this was all part of Julia's withdrawal from the World, her loss of interest in anyone after she lost her child.