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@thefoxgoestotthemovies
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7.5/10
A couple years ago a French friend dissuaded me from taking my mom to Marseilles for a Christmas holiday, suggesting there were better, nicer and more importantly, safer places to travel to within Southern France. I ended up going to Montpellier instead but I’ve always been curious about the port city since. So I was intrigued to watch Stillwater, Director Tom McCarthy’s follow up to his Best Picture winning film Spotlight, especially when I learned that it was the story of an American father who travels to Marseille to prove that his incarcerated daughter is innocent of murder.
Watching the film I can’t help but wonder whether McCarthy was inspired by the true life case of Amanda Knox, the American student who was jailed for a few years in Italy for the murder of her roommate, only to be acquitted when new evidence came to light. The similarities are clearly there. But McCarthy is interested in telling another story, focusing instead on the accused’s father, in a terrific performance by Matt Damon, a meat-and-potatoes American who is clearly out of his depth as he struggles to find justice in a foreign land. And here we get a depiction of Marseilles that seems to corroborate my friend’s description of the city - one that has seen better days, with a slight undercurrent of danger that could pose a threat to outsiders who try to venture out of its tourism bubble.
But McCarthy has always been a Director with nuance. And so what could have been a thriller with Damon going full Neeson against the unsavoury locals instead becomes a film about finding community and second chances. And this unexpected transition works, thanks to the chemistry Damon has with Camille Cottin and Lilou Siauvaud, playing a single mother and her young daughter who offers Damon’s character a chance for redemption. It’s a shame then that the film needs to return to its main premise in the third act, especially with all the complexities involved in the murder case. It feels like an incomplete mashup of two very different films, with a too neat resolution that leaves plenty to ponder about.
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