Cara Delevingne, Kate Beckinsale and Daniel Bruhl at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival [Getty]
By Jane Mulkerrins
Michael Winterbottom’s latest film, The Face of An Angel, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this week. A fictionalised version of the trial of Amanda Knox - who was accused and found guilty of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher in 2007 - it stars Kate Beckinsale as an American journalist, Daniel Bruhl as a filmmaker looking for a Hollywood angle on the story, and Cara Delevingne as an English student on a year abroad.
With the real-life Knox, now 27, awaiting her second trial, after an Italian court overturned the appeal which set her free in 2011, we had questions. Whose perspective would the film favour? Or would it be impartial? And can our favourite onesie-wearing supermodel really act?
Grazia was lucky enough to be in Toronto for a sneak preview. Here’s what we learned…
1. It’s only a very lightly fictionalised version of the Amanda Knox story
Early on in the film, Simone (Beckinsale) tells Thomas (Bruhl): ‘If you’re going to make a film, you’d better make it fiction. You can’t tell the truth unless it’s fiction’. Winterbottom, it seems, failed to heed to his own warning.
Though the names have been changed – Meredith Kircher is now Elizabeth Pryce; Amanda Knox is Jessica Fuller – and the action takes place in Sienna rather than Perugia, there’s barely space to slide a cigarette paper between the film’s narrative and the endless reports coming out of Italy for the past seven years.
So close to reality is the film that Knox’s lawyers have said they would consider legal action against BBC Films, the production company behind the movie, if they believed it might damage Amanda’s image or prejudice the forthcoming trial.
2. Another string to her bow - Cara Delevingne can act
She’s long aspired to branch out into acting, and now the 21 year-old supermodel makes her first major film debut as Melanie, a British student on a year abroad, studying and working as a barmaid in Sienna.
While admittedly the role isn’t an enormous dramatic stretch – her fun-loving, carefree character serves drinks, smokes cigarettes, goes to parties and scores drugs for Thomas – Delevingne is an on-screen delight.
The director said that he employed the relatively inexperienced (bar a tiny part in Anna Karenina) model because ‘Cara embodies certain qualities, an idea of optimism, the spirit of happiness and energy.‘ And he’s right - she’s natural and eminently watchable, in all her long-legged, DM-booted, fag-smoking loveliness.
3. Michael Winterbottom thinks journalists are cynical, amoral animals…
There’s no mistaking the filmmaker’s own verdict: that Knox’s trial was a media circus, with cynical hacks destructively dredging up dirt rather than seeking the truth. He vehemently disapproves of the fact that true crime has become a ghoulish form of entertainment (though he’s made a film from it…).
The journalists in The Face of An Angel are a hateful bunch, sensationalising every scrap, willing to do anything to get a story, obsessed with the gory details of the killing and who did it, rather than why. The swarm of overseas correspondents circling the court each day turn it into the most addictive reality show…then they get drunk and all have sex with each other.
4. …and that Meredith Kercher and her family have been forgotten about
While Jessica Fuller becomes a media celebrity in her notoriety, there’s a scene in which Elizabeth Pryce’s family hold a press conference, reminding the media that their daughter is the real victim. The film itself in dedicated to the memory of Meredith Kercher, the person who, Winterbottom clearly believes, has been wholly overlooked in the obsession with Knox’s ongoing trials.
5. Students studying abroad, expats, filmmakers and correspondents all go off the rails away from home
Away from familiar eyes and off the leash where no one really knows them, students on a year abroad are notorious for behaving with less restraint than usual, a point that has been mentioned many times in relation to the Knox case.
But the film also asserts that people with jobs and families are no different when stationed abroad for a spell. Simone - a mother of two - sleeps with a vile, smug Daily Mail correspondent, before sleeping with Thomas, then returning to the Mail reporter. Thomas himself, meanwhile, who talks about being ‘in exile’, away from his ex-wife and daughter in the US, begins to take copious amounts of cocaine, alone, and descends into a sweaty pit of paranoia.
6. We may never know ‘the truth’
‘There are so many contradictions, there is no such thing as real truth or real justice – it’s just a popularity contest,’ says Thomas, as he begins to realise he truly has his work cut out getting to the bottom of what happened. ‘If they killed her, it doesn’t make sense; if they didn’t kill her, it doesn’t make sense either.’
The corruption and self-interest of the Italian police, and the creaking inefficiency of the country’s justice system mean we’ll never really know the truth, he asserts. And as Knox awaits trial once more - seven years, one guilty verdict, one appeal win and one overturning of that decision after Meredith’s death - it does seem a rather pertinent point.
The Face of An Angel will be released in the UK on October 18th