[yasr_overall_rating]
A whodunit based on the murder of popular children’s book author and illustrator Olivia Lake.
Everyone seems to love a murder mystery. Particularly when the deceased is a woman or a girl-child on the cusp of womanhood. Murdered men aren’t as popular. They don’t carry quite the same heft or give an air of salaciousness that audiences seem to crave. We definitely love our dead girls. The younger the better and if it’s a menopausal biddy on the brink of finally finding happiness, we’ll relish in that too. And what that says about us is perhaps darker than the murders themselves. Steven Soderbergh’s “Mosaic” concerns the murder of an aging children’s author and illustrator who is tortured by her waning youth and desire to be desired. It’s a murder expressed through discombobulated points of view and time shifts. It’s angular and jagged and both serene and inexplicably dark. It’s cinematically cold in a thrilling kind of way. Like snow left pristine longer than expected, a corpse is just befitting. It dazzles the eye. Beyond that, “Mosaic” is like white noise that won’t stay constant. It lulls you to sleep and then jolts you awake only to irritate you and wish you were still sleeping.
The majority of the characters are perfectly acted, almost to a fault. Everything seems hyper-real and intense but at times translates to cardboard. It’s definitely a head-trip, like actors playing actors playing characters. You have Olivia Lake, expertly played by Sharon Stone. She’s a woman who seems to have it all, successful in all of her endeavors with the exception of love. A cougar in decline. Her verbosity makes you nervous, sick even. But you also feel her pain, her loneliness, ever-present like a slick sheen on the skin. Every woman wants to love to hate her but only because they fear becoming her. Her death is bittersweet.
Surrounding Olivia near the time of her murder, is Joel Hurley (Garrett Hedlund), a “stray” Olivia claimed and welcomed into her home until she realized he was not single, he comes with a tagalong girlfriend, Laura (Maya Kazan). The mood swiftly shifts and now a welcomed guest is an eyesore of disappointment and is treated as such. Joel is quiet and takes it on the chin, but a brutish shadow side is closer to the surface than one might think. And then there is Olivia’s neighbor, billionaire Michael O’ Connor (James Ransone) for whom she was a mother figure. His presence is unnerving, as is his right-hand man Tom Davis (Michael Cerveris). Michael no longer requires love and support or friendship from Olivia, but rather desires her property for the “pristine views,” when in reality what lies beneath is more money to be made. Enter professional con man Eric Neill (Frederick Weller). Eric’s duty is to charm the pants off Olivia via a plan to expand her foundation, forcing her to detach from her home and be willing to sell. Plans fall through when a genuine love develops for Olivia. Lies, love, and murder, a classic combo for a whodunit.
It should be a combo for success, but “Mosaic” is just a jagged lullaby. The first 3 episodes require patience, and by the time things start to pick up you just don’t care anymore. She’s dead, Michael and Tom have what they want, Joel’s an angry young man who may have went all upside the head of Olivia with a hammer, or perhaps it was Eric Neill after Olivia rejects him despite him coming clean. The only one it matters to anymore is Petra Neill (Jennifer Ferrin), sister to Eric who decides 4 years after the fact to stir up the murder pot and peg a new murderer because all of a sudden, she cares. There is no climax, no resolution, just that inconsistent nauseating white noise.
Now available on Blu-ray & DVD
