An oblique approach to the serial-killer thriller, The Dead Girl examines a young woman’s murder from nearly every angle – except for the traditional Hollywood one. When a body is found in a field, writer-director Karen Moncrieff (Blue Car) doesn’t proceed into a game of cat and mouse. Instead, she broods in separate segments over

"Its waywardness may not make for the tightest of narratives, but it certainly gives the movie the pulse of real, random life."

This story of a married couple’s courting, betrayal and reunion – adapted from a novel by W. Somerset Maugham – is told in delicate, almost imperceptible notes. Edward Norton and Naomi Watts play the middle-class doctor and upper-class socialite who marry for conflicting reasons and set off to China. Both actors emphasize the loaded gestures