The Face of an Angel — review

Never tell a filmmaker with high productivity to slow down. Presto may be the tempo that suits him. Take the first feature film in two years from once praised and prolix Michael Winterbottom (Jude, Welcome to Sarajevo, In This World).

The Face of an Angel, cumbrously scripted by Paul Viragh, tries to ricochet off the Meredith Kercher case. A German director (Daniel Brühl) in Italy ponders a Hell-is-media-hacks story, stoking his inspiration with a murder trial furore, a fling with a US journo (Kate Beckinsale) and some cringe-inducing musings on Dante.

Brühl wants to structure his film on the Inferno: the media circus as the Nine Circles of Hell. It’s a portentously shallow idea, at least as outlined here, and Winterbottom’s is a portentously shallow movie. The pace is a pseudo-philosophical slo-mo — for Death in Venice read Coma in Siena (standing in for the Kercher case’s Perugia) — and the performances never bring life to cipher characters.

Self-serving apothegms such as “You can’t tell the truth unless you make it a fiction” only add to the feeling that those involved have no idea what they are doing, but will strive to make whatever it is seem and sound terribly important.