La ragazza nella nebbia (2017)

Directed by: Donato Carrisi | 127 minutes | crime, thriller | Actors: Toni Servillo, Alessio Boni, Lorenzo Richelmy, Galatea Ranzi, Michela Cescon, Lucrezia Guidone, Daniela Piazza, Thierry Toscan, Ekaterina Buscemi, Antonio Gerardi, Jean Reno, Greta Scacchi, Marina Occhionero, Jacopo Olmo Antinori

We often see successful books that are made into film. But the fact that the author of that so successful book is the one who brings the film adaptation to the silver screen is a lot rarer. The Italian Donato Carrisi initially wrote ‘La ragazza nella nebbia’ (or ‘The Girl in the Mist’) as a screenplay and took it to various producers in the hope that one of them would pick it up. Unfortunately for Carrisi, the script was rejected time and again. Because he thought it was a shame not to do anything with the story, Carrisi decided to publish it in book form. That was in 2009. The book became a great success; the story was translated into 26 languages ​​and in total the book sold over a million copies worldwide. With producers Maurizio Totti and Alessandro Usai, two old friends from the film world, Carrisi decided to start a collaboration. The first project that came to mind for filming was ‘La ragazza nella nebbia’. “On a rainy afternoon in Milan, I told Totti about the thriller I wanted so badly to bring to the screen and I managed to persuade him,” said Carrisi. “He immediately suggested that I direct the film myself. I had just become a father of a son and wrote the screenplay during the broken nights, between changing diapers and rocking my child back to sleep.”

Two months after fifteen-year-old Anna Lou Kastner disappeared into the fog on her way to church in the South Tyrolean hamlet of Avechot, the eccentric detective Vogel (Toni Servillo), who had thrown himself into the case, ends up in a car accident in the Hopital. He’s covered in blood, but it turns out it’s not just his own. Vogel is arrested and psychiatrist Dr. Flores (Jean Reno, in fluent Italian) is hired to find out if the confused detective has any idea what happened and if he may have committed murder. Vogel begins to tell his story, and the viewer relives the events through his memories. We go back in time to two days before the disappearance of Anna Lou, the neat daughter of parents who belong to a strict religious sect and whose hobbies are kittens and God. A girl so pure and innocent it can hardly be true.

We soon notice something strange is going on with Vogel. And then it’s not the obsessions around his clothes. No, it’s mainly about his behavior. Vogel has quite remarkable research methods. During one of his previous cases, the so-called ‘Manipulator case’, he tampered with evidence in order to get his suspect involved. In addition, he plays the media to his heart’s content: by getting as many press mosquitoes as possible to the crime scene and sending fake news messages into the ether, he hopes to smoke out the perpetrator, as it were. Vogel is a man who will do anything to solve the mystery, but for him it is not about bringing out the truth, but about attention, credits and reparation after the so horribly gone wrong ‘Manipulator case’. For above all, Vogel is vain and ambitious. He soon finds two suspects: a mysterious boy (Jacopo Olmo Antinori) who followed Anna Lou with his camera and Martini (Alessio Boni), a teacher from the only school in Avechot. But how does he explain the mystery of the other red-haired girls, who disappeared from the area thirty years ago?

From the moment Martini comes into the picture as a possible perpetrator, the narrative perspective shifts to his side of the story and we see the events through his eyes. Hunted by the media who, thanks to the clues and suspicions carefully dropped by Vogel, smell blood. Such a change in narrative perspective often works better in a book than in a film and that is also the case with ‘La ragazza nella nebbia’ (2017). The film is already quite confusing and the play with chronology and angles does not make it any clearer. Servillo, who we mainly know from ‘La grande bellezza’ (2013) by Paolo Sorrentino, clearly enjoys playing Vogel, especially when he responds to his critics in a razor-sharp manner. But no matter how solid Servillo plays, Vogel remains a one-dimensional character and that applies to all characters that pass by. Where you can take the time to sketch characters in a book, you have to approach it very differently in a film. Carrisi knows his characters through and through, of course, but makes the mistake of assuming that this also applies to his audience. The film was shot in sober tones, probably to add to the mystery a bit. But we would have preferred to see more of the area instead of darkened rooms and meaningless models of the mountain village. Of course we won’t say anything about the end, but that we are not once but even twice misled is perhaps a bit too much of a good thing and that Carrisi gives the clue clumsily is disappointing.

The question with this film is: could a different director have handled things better? To ask the question is to answer it. Carrisi is probably an expert at writing exciting fiction, but translating a good story to the silver screen in the right way is an art in itself, as it turns out. It is the actors, in particular Servillo, Reno and Boni, and the basic concept of the story that keep ‘La ragazza nella nebbia’ somewhat intact. And let’s give Donato Carrisi some more credit; after all, it is only his debut as a director. The next film adaptation – ‘L’Uomo del labirinto’ (2019) – is already on its way; hopefully the rookie mistakes are gone with that movie.