Life for an indie-film-fan couldn’t get much better than Moncrieff’s bleak tale of human suffering, featuring as it does a dream-cast of indie favourites. Among the headliners are Toni Collette, Piper Laurie, Giovanni Ribisi, Mary Steenburgen and Marcia Gay Harden. Small wonder The Dead Girl caught three nominations at The Independent Spirit Awards. It’s just the kind of heavy hearted material beloved of black-coaters.

It’s also the kind of film Jim Jarmusch might have made in a darker mood. Several vignettes come together to reveal the death of a young woman. These dislocated stories are joined by a central character, the now rotting corpse of a hooker. But before she died she was someone’s friend, another’s sister and her mother’s daughter. Transpires she was also her young daughter’s mother. Hers is the kind of story given two paragraphs on page three; but for those involved has the power to transform lives.

In addition to a compelling narrative, The Dead Girl is distinguished by performance. Foremost is Collette as a bullied woman who finds the body, and Harden as the girl’s mother. They are a formidable presence and set a hight bar for an excellent cast who rise to the occasion: notably Rose Byrne as a woman convinced the girl is her missing sister, and Piper Laurie as Collette’s horrendous mother.

The Dead Girl is unable to bring much in the way of levity to such a desolate subject (how could it?), yet Moncrieff does tease a little hope from each of the stories: some, Harden, more readily than others, Byrne. This is not an easy nor enjoyable film to watch. It’s rewards may be less immediate, less tangible than similar conventional movies, but they’re no less valuable. Pun unintended, The Dead Girl is a resolutely grim yet wonderfully haunting film.

// COLIN FRASER