Yara (2021) is a nonfiction crime movie about the
disappearance and murder of 13-year-old Yara Gambirasio. The film follows magistrate Letizia Ruggeri’s long search to find her killer, taking us through the procedural twists and turns of the case and ending with the capture and conviction of Massimo Bossetti.
Based on a true story, Yara (2021) has the benefit of a ready-made audience of those who followed the investigation in the press and who will want a glimpse into the specifics of how the crime was solved. But turning true events into a narrative can be challenging. There’s a desire to tell the whole story without omitting any details, and this can bog the movie down in unnecessary particulars. Unfortunately, Yara (2021) lacks focus: in its attempt to tell the whole story, it struggles to tell a consistently engaging story.
Films about solving crimes tend to fall into two camps: focusing mainly on the investigative process or focusing more on the investigators themselves. By trying to do both in a 96-minute runtime, Yara struggles to do either story justice.
An excellent film that focuses on the investigative process is ironically one that doesn’t deal with crime at all (at least in any traditional sense). 2016's
Shin Godzilla shows how government officials work behind the scenes to stop a giant monster from terrorizing Japan. Government minutia is tough to make interesting, but with its quick pace and driving momentum, Shin Godzilla proves that films about the inner workings of methodical and flawed government officials can be gripping (of course, the horrific destruction wrought by a giant terrifying lizard helps too). Yara (2021) has two distinct disadvantages. One, unlike the strangely beautiful destruction of Shin Godzilla, the crime is horrible and sad. And two, while Shin Godzilla takes place over the course of weeks, the murder of Yara Gambirasio took years to investigate and prosecute, which means the movie is inevitably filled with lulls in the action and dull moments. Real life government investigations are often boring, and when a film is based on a true story, the writers can’t invent more intriguing elements or alter the timeline to make the narrative more compelling.
A film with a
more complex legacy,
The Silence of the Lambs, is a good example of an investigative film that focuses on the investigator more than the often dry process of solving a crime. Clarice Starling must prove herself against the sexist expectations from her peers and pursues often strange methods for solving the crime. Investigator Letizia Ruggeri in Yara (2021) is a similar protagonist. Her superiors doubt her experience and expertise because of her gender, and her expensive–though ultimately successful–plan to create a DNA database is questioned relentlessly. Although we can’t expect any of Ruggeri’s real life collaborators to be as fascinating as Hannibal Lector, it would have been nice to get to know her fellow investigators a bit more. Because none of these characters are distinct and the conversations only serve to move the plot forward, none of her interactions with them are particularly memorable, making the whole film duller by comparison. It’s tough to create a strong character in isolation. And although Ruggeri’s relationship with her daughter could be humanizing, these scenes are some of the most cliché. We see Ruggeri interrupted by a phone call during her daughter’s dance recital and a scene where her daughter wanders off and a frightened Ruggeri reprimands her. We’ve seen these scenes before and the cliché renders them impersonal. Again, the focus is in the wrong place.
