STILLWATER. Starring: Matt Damon, Camille Cottin, Abigail Breslin, and Lilou Siauvaud. Directed by Tom McCarthy. Rated M (Mature themes, violence and coarse language). 139 min.
Bill Baker (Damon) works part-time as a construction work in Stillwater, Oklahoma, US. He has tragically lost his wife by suicide, and he has led a life affected seriously by alcohol and drug abuse. Now he wants to make up for past mistakes. The film shows Allison (Breslin), his estranged daughter, serving time in a French prison. She asks him to help her, and gives him the chance he needs to regain the faith she had in him.
Allison Baker was studying abroad in Marseille, France, when she was arrested and charged with murdering her friend and partner, Lina, another student. She has already served five years in prison after she was found guilty by a French court for killing Lina. When a fresh lead opens, Bill leaves his job as an oil-rig worker behind to help his daughter clear her name. In Marseille, he is aided by a French bilingual woman, Virginie (Cottin), and her young daughter, Maya (Siauvaud). Virginie is impressed by Bill’s kindness to Maya, who forms a close attachment to him.
The film is directed by Tom McCarthy, who directed Spotlight (2015), the much-awarded film about the decades-long sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Boston, US. This film is inspired loosely by factual events in 2007 that surrounded an American college exchange student, Amanda Knox, who was accused of the murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher, while studying in Italy. Knox served time in an Italian prison before she was released.
When the new lead into Lina’s death opens, Allison is at wit’s end on how to pursue her innocence, and presses her father to engage with her legal team urgently to help her. He agrees, and he anxiously tries to restore his daughter’s trust. Bill Baker is a roughneck, uneducated, God-fearing worker, and in France he is blocked by language barriers and acutely feels the impact of a foreign culture. Virginia comes to his aid, as his translator and guide.
The film deftly explores the social, political and racial complexities of life in Marseille. Lina was of Arab descent, and lesbian, as Allison is; and Jack is a rough construction worker, who is ill at ease with cultural differences. The film quickly puts the focus on Bill and his relationship to Allison, and returns later to the details of Lina’s murder. Life with Virginia and Maya provides Bill with needed support, and when Bill cannot get the French legal system to reopen his daughter’s case, he decides to take matters into his own hands, and acts impulsively. The movie combines family drama with a personal quest for justice, and Damon impressively takes the lead role with quiet determination and resolve. Damon projects Bill’s humanity by joining it with the personality of someone, who is emotionally and personally honest, but vulnerable, and Damon skillfully captures the complex mix of feelings and motivation that impels the character he is playing. Bill has a quick temper, but the film takes time to communicate that Bill’s impulsivity also co-exists with acts of genuine kindness.
The film dramatically mixes poverty, cultural lure, and gritty social realism. Jack’s feelings swirl around. McCarthy has delivered a complex, ambitious film that fuses different social and emotional themes together, across separate cultures. His core themes are the restoration of trust and love between father and daughter, an examination of a brutal murder, and the pull of different cultural forces. By the film’s end, Bill has become a person, who has learned to live in harmony with his new surrounds, and he has restored his daughter’s trust.
The film’s core concerns come together at times in scenes that are directed to startle, but McCarthy shows the same skill in threading the film’s different narrative thrusts and themes together, that he did so well in Spotlight.
Universal
Released in cinemas, late 2021. Streaming on Paramount +, 8 December 2021
Image: Camille Cottin as Virginie and Matt Damon as Bill in director Tom McCarthy’s Stillwater, a Focus Features release. Credit Jessica Forde / Focus Features