Stillwater

I have always liked Matt Damon’s work, but I watched this partly die to the presence of Camille Cottin, who was excellent in the French Netflix series Call My Agent! The main characters are complex, with Damon playing a redneck Oklahoma man and his daughter. Allison, played by Abigail Breslin. They all do fine work and there is a strong ensemble cast behind them. They do a good job mixing the captioned French dialogue with the English speakers. The plot eventually relies upon a rather large coincidence, but the dialogue and script are crisp, so it all works. Don’t expect a sappy ending here. As in real life, some things work out and some don’t.

**_It’s a brutal world_** An Okie roughneck (Matt Damon) goes to Marseille, France, to exonerate his daughter (Abigail Breslin) by possibly finding the real murderer. Meanwhile he finds work and makes friends with a theater actress & her daughter (Camille Cottin and Lilou Siauvaud). "Stillwater" is a quality drama with a reverent ambiance and the gorgeous locations of the westernmost part of the French Riviera. It has the confidence to take its time while Damon works well as the respectful protagonist for whom you root. The little girl is precious and you effectively get to know the city of Marseille, including its current social issues, largely due to unfettered immigration. It turns out, the movie was inspired by the Amanda Knox story from November, 2007, to October, 2011, which involved the murder of Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy, and Amanda’s eventual acquittal, not to mention the acquittal of Kercher’s beau Raffaele Sollecito. The most glaring difference is that Knox and Kercher weren’t lesbians and the latter was a Caucasian from the London area, not of Arab descent. This was changed into an interracial lesbian relationship for the film (rolling my eyes). This factor and the revelations in the last act moved Amanda to denounce the film for profiting from her wrongful conviction and outrageously distorting the facts. Needless to say, to appreciate the movie, it’s necessary to separate it from Knox’s real-life story and value it as its own story and piece of art. I did and did. It runs 2 hours, 19 minutes, and was shot in Oklahoma and Marseilles. GRADE: B