Damian Harris’s gruelling drama about an eight-year-old girl who is abducted by paedophiles in Pennsylvania has darkened the mood at the Berlin Film Festival. The film is one of the few British contenders for the Golden Bear this year, and it brings the shocking business of lost childhood into unwelcome focus. Harris — older son of Richard — has been a model of inconsistency since he made his feature film debut with The Rachel Papers. He has been working on the script for Gardens of the Night since the late 1980s, and frankly it shows.
The film is a toiling labour of love. Its angry power is documented almost entirely from the perspective of a child. The villains and victims look normal; the scenarios are so twisted that they couldn’t possibly have been invented. The first reel charts the kidnapping and grooming of a blonde, middle-class schoolgirl called Leslie (played by Ryan Simpkins). Hitchcock could not have imagined a more perfect, or perverted, nightmare. A kindly fat man from the local water board has lost his dog, Trixie. Can Leslie help? Of course she can. That is the last time she sees her parents. Harris’s years of research have given this harrowing film a taboo stamp of authenticity. Uncle Alex (Tom Arnold) is just as horrified as Leslie when her parents fail to answer his phone calls. He feeds her milk, sleeping tablets and biscuits. Uncle Frank (Kevin Zegers) is rather less accommodating. Pornography becomes the terrified child’s staple diet, and it is miserable to watch. Her only source of comfort is a young black boy, Donnie (Jermaine “Scooter” Smith), who is equally badly abused. They insulate themselves from the routine horror with make-believe stories about Mowgli and his jungle adventures.
But Harris squanders the hard-won discomfort when the film fast-forwards to Leslie aged 16, and a pot-boiler of a soap about how she is coping with life on the streets in downtown San Diego. Gillian Jacobs is far too close to a Nivea Cream advert to play the part of a crack whore who does unspeakable things to truck drivers in order to get by.
The most interesting part of the film is where I instinctively feel it should have begun: with the emotional chaos of a child who can’t recognise her parents after years on the streets. This is where Harris touches a genuine nerve. There’s a scene with John Malkovich — not, perhaps, the world’s most obvious choice to run a children’s refuge centre — which is pure psychological dynamite. But the film is fatally unbalanced by an ingrained Hollywood desire for closure. And I’m afraid that simply doesn’t happen in real life.