ShangLuda Admirable film.

BeSummers Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Chris Smith (RockPortReview) The 2009 Australian film "In Her Skin" is based on a true story of a mentally unstable woman and her obsession with a neighbor girls perfect life. Its a story of two families dealing with heartbreak, class structures, self esteem and who is to blame.Guy Pearce and Miranda Otto play Mike and Elizabeth Barber the upper middle class parents of Rachel, a 15 year old Dancer, who goes missing after accepting a job from an estranged older friend named Caroline, played fearlessly by Ruth Bradley. The girls exist at opposite ends of the class and popularity spectrum. Rachel is young and beautiful with and equally beautiful boyfriend. She has two loving parents and a normal home life. While Caroline, who is in her early to mid 20s, lives alone in an apartment always on the brink of some kind of mental breakdown. Her parents are divorced and her father has long given up hope of having a "normal" daughter. He has had learn to just deal with her craziness after having to bail her out of situations her whole life. Caroline works a dull and dreary office job with little to no motivation to do anything more with her life. Rachel has been a sort of obsession and role model of hers every since she babysat for her years back. An idealized version of what she wish she could be. Caroline feels trapped and cursed to roam the earth in her overweight and unattractive body. She is unloved and unwanted. We can only watch as the clock ticks forward to an enviable breakdown. After Rachel doesn't return home one afternoon. Her parent start to worry and call her friends and the dance studio with no luck. They go to the police but are devastated to be told that Rachel must have ran away or is just out on a bender and will probably show up in a day or two. With all of the other more important cases, they can't be wasting their precious recourses on a missing teenage girl. Mike and Elizabeth do eventually find an investigator dedicated to finding what happen to Rachel and it all leads back to Caroline.The film is uniquely structured in that it is split up into three sections dealing with the individual characters view points and personal struggles. After a brief intro we start with a title card "Mike and Elizabeth", Then go on to "Caroline", then finally "Rachel". The resulting story is raw, honest, and heartbreaking. It is superbly acted by all involved and unlike most Hollywood studio movies doesn't offer any easy answers.

OJT A film with many names. "I am you" originally, turned to "In her skin" and in other countries the rather over used and not very original "Missing". Already in the opening scene you realize this is film which will be pleasant on your eyes. A great opening scene! Beautifully shot, great camera movements, and great setting of emotional feelings, as well as colors and sounds. This is a film which is eye candy, though it's a bleak true story. The film starts with a young daughter, Rachel, going missing on her way from dance practice. The parents know that this is serious, but as always, the police doesn't. Then we tend to another story, about Caroline, which has a mental illness, which affects not only the near family.The film's problem is that the stories are starting over and over in the beginning and takes away the tension. This doesn't help the story telling. Too bad, because there's such an amount of talent here. I think a more traditional storyline would have done different. Without this, the film would have gotten a better score. Still a great story, but the jumping doesn't allow a proper story building for this to become a classic. The mother of Caroline and her crying didn't convince me, but the cast is doing a great job. Amazing acting. A-class. Ruth Bradley is amazing in her role as Caroline.The film reminded me of "Black swan" in more than one way. Both the mental illness, the ballet dancing and the overall quality. Well picked score, heavy on emotion. A great Film, and one if the better Australian films I've seen.

MarieGabrielle Interesting true crime study here which focuses instead on the perpetrator instead of the true crime "whodunit" aspect, kudos to the writer and director for approaching it this way.Ruth Bradley as Caroline Reid, a true crime story wherein a girl is kidnapped and her family frantically searches for her. Miranda Otto and Guy Pearce are the parents, rather standard issue, though there is a good scene where the father breaks down, sensing the outcome of what has happened to his daughter. The soundtrack throughout is very good, and was written about this particular case.Sam Neill as Caroline's father is believable. A businessman worried about appearances, we never see her mother but can only imagine the alienation and absence. Neill is good as narcissistic, critiquing Caroline's "disgusting" apartment and that if she only cleaned it up and lost a few pounds she would feel better. She is in the throes of a major suicidal depression, yet all Dad notices is the dirty laundry.In 2013 in real life Caroline Reid will be released from prison. What motivated her?. Why couldn't she get psychological help? What was her relationship with her father?. All these questions may stay unanswered...If you like this film theme you may also like "The Bell Jar" (original with Marilyn Hassett and Brabara Barrie circa 1979).

perkypops Anyone whose child has gone missing, even momentarily, will connect with the earliest moments of this version of true events, but, perhaps only those for whom the loss remains unresolved for any serious length of time will know how close to their reality this film touches. It is almost relentlessly tough to watch because there is no place for pressure to be relieved, however briefly, by a joke, a glimmer of hope, a slither of a flaw to make us remember we are watching a dramatised version of events. I even find it tough to judge the quality of the acting because too often this film seems so vividly, so uncomfortably, and so chillingly real. I am, if truth be told, just in awe of all the performances I have witnessed and I still have to pinch myself to remember it was "just a film". Is that a compliment?I felt tears on my cheeks three times during this film, not because I was sad, but because my being had to have an outlet and I couldn't laugh or smile. The emptiness, pointlessness, coldness, loneliness of a missing loved one is so bitingly portrayed and yet saying "okay that's enough, I have got your point" is as futile as the parents of Rachel Barber shouting "Rachel come home" on every street corner they could.I remember Hitchcock being heavily criticised by some in the industry for a seven minute killing sequence in "Torn Curtain" when that was easier to justify because it was a work of fiction and a thriller rather than "a week or so in the real life of a family". And so I had mixed feelings about "I Am You" when I reflected on some of the things I had seen, including the closing statements popular with "factual" drama.I am left with these mixed feelings ranging from the reality of the acting to the old adage that imagination is always more powerful than a picture, from the top to the bottom of the things I should feel. And ultimately I cannot give this film a points score because it doesn't feel like it entered the cinematic league stakes. It is a film and if you see it you will feel what it does to you rather than want to talk about to friends. And that IS tough.