“My name is Sylvia. This is my story”.
This is the manner in which An American Crime (2007, directed by Tommy O'Haver), broadcasted on Antenna 1 Friday night and presented by Alexandru Tocilescu. It is a film about the extreme community evil, about the complicity of some violence devourers, whose other people’s sufferance brings them to the point of cannibal-children. American Crime is even more overwhelming because those who assist and those who torture are children and teenagers. A family of circus actors leave their two daughters in the care of a housewife, who has a lover that spends all her money and in addition she has some emotional problems, that cannot be clearly visible in the beginning. She is a woman that teaches her children to pray before dinner, to be well behaved and fair, initiates harsh punishments. She closes one of the little girls in the basement on the account that she insulted her eldest daughter, beat her, keeps her without food and harrows her body. ”I am a prostitute and I am proud of it.” Due to the need of protecting her children, she ends up murdering.
A helpless body becomes the most horrible performance. The children invite their friends to “play” as cruelly as they can with the girl that is hardly breathing. They burn her with the cigars, they restrict her, and they transform her into a punching bag. Sylvia, a mixture of innocence and strength that takes your breath away, is interpreted by Ellen Page (Juno).
The protection becomes anger. Fear signs the deal with silence. Ignorance produces death. An entire community assist at the performance of death in the basement of humanity. The indifference and the frenzy for evil are more tormenting than any torture.
PS: The movie is inspired by a real story
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