A father travels from Oklahoma to France to help his estranged daughter, who is in prison for a murder she claims she didn’t commit.
Chuck says:
In his wildest dreams, Bill Baker (Matt Damon) would never have imagined he’d be living in Marseilles, France. Holding down any construction job he can find, the Oklahoma roughneck is renting a room from a French woman named Virginie (Camille Cottin), who’s doing her best to raise her precocious daughter, Maya (Lilou Siauvaud) It’s Baker’s own daughter that has brought him abroad. In jail for murder, his girl Allison (Abigail Breslin) insists she’s innocent and provides her father with what she thinks is a clue that will prove this to be so. Baker, encountering red tape and resistance from all about him, is doing his best to run this down.
While this cursory summary makes “Stillwater” sound like a crime mystery, it’s much more than that. Director Tom McCarthy (“Spotlight”) has fashioned not only a poignant look at the bond between father and daughter – both by blood and association – as well as a pointed metaphor regarding our country’s place on the world stage and the steps that need to be taken to change how we’re seen as a nation. To be sure, it’s an ambitious film and one that for the most part succeeds in driving home its various points without having to raise its voice.
You can tell which of these issues McCarthy is most intrigued by as so much of the movie deals with Baker’s relationship with Virginie and Maya. The preconceptions the two adults have of one another serve as a source of intrigue rather than prejudice. Virginie’s fascination with the fact that Baker owns guns and is willing to disregard the law to help his daughter draw her towards him in a way she can’t explain yet comes to embrace. Similarly, his stoic disapproval of her Bohemian lifestyle is one that slowly erodes, his own preconceptions overcome as he sees her generosity towards him and Allison. Of course, it’s Maya who ultimately binds them and offers him a chance at absolution as he strives to be the father to her that he never could be to his own child.
There’s so much right about the film that it seems petty to get hung up on its only mistake. Yet, there’s a turn in the story that’s been bugging me since I’ve seen it, a nagging fly in the narrative ointment, a wrong turn in the name of convenience that otherwise hampers a nearly perfect film. Perhaps I’m overreacting as so many other movies expect – and we willingly give – a certain amount of leeway where conjecture by characters and coincidence in plot are concerned. However, the film is so grounded in plausibility throughout that this leap sticks out like a sore thumb. You’ll know it when you see it.
Regardless, this is the only flaw in an otherwise excellent production, one anchored by Damon who gives the finest work of his career. He portrays Baker as a man tenuously holding to a belief system and world that’s slowly slipping away from him. It’s a performance of quiet, coiled intensity, the actor never succumbing to grand or over-the-top moments but rather internalizing Baker’s hurt and confusion, allowing us glimpses of his pain during key moments. The chemistry he creates with Siauvaud account for some of the finest moments I’ve seen on screen this year.
In the end, we realize that “Stillwater” is a plea for reconciliation, which proves elusive in a world in which nothing is as it seems and wrongheaded assumptions dictate our actions. Bracing throughout, you’ll find its ending hard to shake as its barbed resolution lands awfully close to home.
3 1/2 Stars
Pam says:
Tom McCarthy who gave us the award-winning “Spotlight,” dips back into the pool of reality as he loosely bases “Stillwater,” starring Matt Damon, on a top news story from 2007. Amanda Knox was accused of murdering her roommate, convicted and sentenced to jail, but then acquitted after nearly 5 years. McCarthy and his co-writers use her story as the foundation for the film, changing slight details and adding their own subplots, characters, and ultimately their own narrative. These blurred lines between reality and fiction become a story in and of itself; frustrating at times, entertaining at others.
To read her review in its entirety, go to http://reelhonestreviews.com/stillwater-plays-it-safe-in-the-fictitious-version-of-the-amanda-knox-story/
