Watching: Out of Blue

[white_hart]

Carol Morley's latest film, Out of Blue, is a stylish metaphysical murder mystery. It follows detective Mike Hoolihan as she investigates the shooting of astrophysicist Jennifer Rockwell, a shooting with many similarities to a series of unsolved killings from nearly 40 years ago. The investigation encompasses dark matter, black holes, Schrödinger's cat and parallel universes, as well as more mundane examinations of evidence and interviews with the dead woman's family and colleagues; Mike, normally unaffected by her cases, finds herself having dizzy spells and fainting as she investigates. There's more to this case than first meets the eyes, and Morley uses repeated phrases and images to lampshade the truism that crime drama is always at least as much about the detective as it is about the crime.

There's a very Twin Peaks feel to Out of Blue, at least if Twin Peaks was set in New Orleans and centred on women rather than men. I liked it a lot, though T was a bit more ambivalent.