In Her Skin

This a powerful movie with a long lasting impression. I think Simone did a fantastic job with this story. She kept to the actual events of what happened to Rachel, her family, friends as well as Caroline without glorifying it, sugar coating it and hollywoodising it. It is real and it is raw. This is what happened and this is how the people involved experienced it. The acting is fantastic, the way the scenes flow and the cinematography is excellent. Along with the true story there are messages to take from it, one being involved and recognizing mental illness, as we know is a massive and growing problem in the community.

In 1999, in Melbourne, the Babers are a happy middle-class family, and the fifteen-year-old ballerina daughter Rachel Barber (Kate Bell) is in love with her boyfriend Manni (Khan Chittenden), who dances with her. One night, Mr. Barber (Guy Pearce) is waiting for Rachel at the tram station, but she never appears. On the next morning, Mrs. Barber (Miranda Otto) and he go to the police to report that their daughter is missing, but the police detective does not give much attention, believing Rachel is a runaway home. However, Mr.& Mrs. Baker do not give up and distribute missing person pamphlets along the tram route. Manni discloses to them that Rachel had been invited by an older woman for a confidential job to earn a great amount that would allow Rachel to buy the desired ballet slipper. Meanwhile, the unstable teenager Caroline Reid Robertson (Ruth Bradley), who has inferiority complex, low self-esteem, depression and eventual seizures due to the medicines she must take, sees Rachel and Manni making out in a bench on the street. She was a former front door neighbor to the Barber family, with divorced parents, that idolized Rachel and tried to imitate her. Her obsession increased over the years, and she plots a plan to lure Rachel and bring her to her apartment. What will happen to Rachel?

"In Her Skin" (2009) is a dramatic Australian thriller based on a true story. The screenplay is very well written, showing the story by different point of views from the family and the killer. Unfortunately, this DVD was not in my priority list of my collection and only yesterday I saw this great film. The sad story is very well-acted and despite the names of Guy Pearce, Miranda Otto and Sam Neill, the unknown Ruth Bradley steals the movie with her magnificent performance as an insane teenager. How Caroline transported Rachel's body to hide at the farmer of her father is never explained. Was her wealthy father involved? Further, the sentence of twenty years imprisoned with the right to probation after fourteen years is absolutely unfair to the Barbers, who lost a beloved fifteen-year-old daughter in a planned murder. It seems that the Australian justice system has similar problems to the Brazilian one. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Vítima Perfeita" ("The Perfect Victim")

This movie is a puzzler. On the second viewing, I thought it was pretty good.

I don't know why that is for certain. Is it because, on first viewing, the film makes you angry about innocence stolen and snuffed out forever? This is the natural reaction you get from watching this, but the final shot makes you feel as though the makers of it disagree or were too busy being even handed, respectful to both families,that they leached the ending of it's inherent power. You'll have to see this film to find out. I will just conclude with this point. Dear filmmakers, choose a lane. This isn't one of those stories where you can "take both sides".

Miranda Otto is the standout performance, but the entire Otto family is wildly talented, so unfairly, a genius acting performance is to be expected from her clan and as per usual, she doesn't disappoint. Guy Pearce is solid and the young actors in this film are uniformly excellent. A solid crime film, based on a true story that you won't soon forget.

I saw a movie today that moved me. I watched it by chance. I almost returned the movie to Netflix without watching. But, as luck would have it, I had nothing else to do, and nothing on my DVR, so I popped it in. I was in a trance the entire time. Simone North did something that is rarely done in movies today. She got a gut wrenching, honest and realistic performance. Ruth Bradley should have won an Oscar for her performance. The realistic portrayal of insanity was amazing. I was reading some reviews and was quite disappointed by their negative opinions of the movie. I am not sure what has happened to Hollywood. Why is it so one sided now? Why must everything in the movies be about portraying America as Bad and evil, the minority as the victim, the homosexual as the hero....I am okay with all of that IF THE MOVIE IS GOOD! Focus on the story, the acting....stop with the regurgitation of last years hits. Thank you Simone North for stepping out of the box and giving us some amazing performances.

I have always been a fan of Guy Pearce (who will always be remembered as Mike from Neighbours in the UK)who is an actor that always seems to appear in decent films. On that basis I decided to watch this small Australian film.

The film covers a real life case of a 15 year old girl who inexplicably goes missing from home. We see the reaction of her parents the excellent Pearce and Miranda Otto as they struggle to get the police to take the disappearance seriously. The film then concentrates on of the suspects a former babysitter played with chilling menace by Ruth Bradley and her father played by the dependable Sam Neill. The final part and weakest part of the film follows the missing girl.

The subject matter doesn't really make for happy viewing and for that i cannot bring myself to give it a higher mark, yet it is an excellently made film and one of the best of it's type I have seen. It certainly deserves a wider audience.

Be warned that one of the scenes in particular is extremely disturbing and may upset a lot of viewers.