The Dead Girl is a quintet of stories about seemingly unrelated people whose lives converge around the murder of a young woman - not in the sense that they overlap in strange, unconvincing and implausible ways (ala Crash), but rather that the death of one girl (Brittany Murphy actually) becomes a device or, more accurately, an entry-point into the lives of 4 other women, all of whom are suffering in some tragic way. [Click on pics above for larger versions.]
The Daughter: Toni Collette plays an emotionally stunted woman terrorized by her emotionally abusive and domineering mother (who's also an invalid requiring constant attention, natch). After finding the dead girl's body, and nicking a little momento, Collette leaves her mother and embarks on an awkward love/sex-affair with serial-killer-obsessed store-clerk Giovanni Ribisi. Hilarity ensues as Collette subtly but implacably makes BDSM-related demands to be tied up and beaten etc etc - my personal fave
The Sister: Woman with missing/abducted sister mistakes body of dead girl for her sibling, coz she's also a coroner, obvs.
The Wife: Wife of man discovers man to be vicious serial killer of young girls. Decides not to turn him in.
The Mother: ha ha ha. Check out Marcia Gay Harden's costume! She's a small-town, uptight, but essentially good woman (duh! look at that collar) who discovers that her missing daughter is not only dead, but was also the dreaded hooker-lesbian-junkie combo. Marcia rescues newly-discovered grandchild from evil poor people and manages to make some sort of peace with daughter's hooker lover. Total TV movie.
The Dead Girl: Brittany Murphy ends up dead.
The Take-out: A serious, sombre and relatively bleak film which is remarkable for managing to be a film about women without becoming a 'women's film', if that makes any sense.
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