The Internet is full of plastic surgeons speculating about cosmetic work done on celebrities of a certain age. Pillow lips swollen from too much collagen, overfilled apple cheeks, and foreheads made glacial by Botox aren’t fooling anyone, these armchair analysts say, and they won’t win any prizes for aesthetics.
Such obvious interventions would never have been allowed by Dr. Angela Reynolds, the highly discreet and in-demand cosmetic surgeon at the center of Emma Bamford’s romantic thriller Eye of the Beholder. Those (sniff) “high street” treatments are not her thing. This doctor’s style is subtle, a way of “reversing youthful mistakes…. It’s all about forgetting, or erasing, the past.”
Since Angela has previously kept a low profile, ghostwriter Madeleine Wright thinks she’s gotten a golden ticket out of vanity-memoir hackdom when Angela commissions her to write her book. Cosmetic surgery is a hot topic, the money is great, and Maddy might finally see her name on the cover.
But Maddy is dismayed by their first meeting at Angela’s Scottish retreat. Her subject already has done most of the work herself, and insists on keeping it a jargon-filled dermatology treatise. Nonetheless, Maddy persists, cranking out the manuscript on a crazy deadline while sharing the house with Angela’s business partner, Scott De Luca. Angela has warned her that Scott is a depressive alcoholic, but Maddy sees little evidence of this beyond a few odd incidents, and falls heavily for him.
Once back in London, Maddy learns that Scott has committed suicide. She spends a year grieving until one night she sees him, or his doppelgänger, in a subway station. Cue Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, with Maddy assuming the role of the obsessive Scottie (the James Stewart character) and Scott as Madeleine (Kim Novak).
Bamford’s novel isn’t a strict update of Hitchcock’s masterpiece, but it borrows incidents and plot devices, like the use of a double, to create a clever homage. The medicalized wing of the beauty industry hovers icily in the background, while the sense of unease in the house on the moor is fitfully paranoid. Like Hitchcock, Bamford is interested in how appearances can deceive—and what our obsession with them reveals about ourselves.
Eye of the Beholder isn’t a strict update of Hitchcock’s masterpiece, but it borrows incidents and plot devices, like the use of a double, to create a clever homage.
Since the toll of aging has been top of mind lately, the sad state of the ex-gangsters in Italian director Stefano Sollima’s Adagio seems especially relevant. Stripped of any outlaw swagger they once had, the remnants of the Magliana gang inhabit a Rome plagued by blackouts, soaring temperatures, and an ominous fire burning on the outskirts of the city. This third film in a trilogy about crime in Rome by gangster auteur Sollima (whose TV series include Gomorrah and Zero Zero Zero) feels like an elegy for a generation.
Former Magliana-gang boss Daytona (Toni Servillo, slipping in and out of reality) hangs out in his apartment repeating the multiplication tables to stave off his dementia. His old friend Cammello (Pierfrancesco Favino, hollow-eyed and stoic) is dying of cancer and just wants to be left alone. Another is now blind.
These broken-down old men no longer trouble the police. But when some corrupt cops recruit Daytona’s son, Manuel (Gianmarco Franchini), to infiltrate a party and take pictures of a cross-dressing, drug-dispensing government minister, Daytona and Cammello step gingerly back into action. Manuel has gone rogue and needs help to escape the brutal carabinieri hunting him down.
Though the theme of fathers and sons and a certain code of honor play out in moving ways here, this is not some feel-good last hurrah. Sollima is too much of a realist for that.
When Manuel flees to a train station, the crowds of well-heeled travelers are jarring. We’ve been immersed in an urban nightmare of crumbling apartments and bursts of violence, so this flash of normalcy seems beamed in from a different universe. But outside the station, the fires still burn, and the heat is as much a weapon as the ubiquitous guns shoved in waistbands. Whether this is meant to be an environmental statement or a foreshadowing of hell is up to the viewer. But Sollima leaves the door open a crack to the possibility of redemption.
When journalist and podcaster Tessa Kramer began a profile of forensic scientist Mary Jane Burton, she had every reason to believe the woman was a hero. Following Burton’s death, in 1999, scraps of evidence she had taped to case notebooks in the 70s and 80s were found in the Richmond, Virginia, crime lab where she had worked. The evidence was re-tested for DNA and ended up exonerating 13 men imprisoned for violent crimes they did not commit. (The theory was that Burton had somehow foreseen the coming of DNA, which could confirm a suspect’s guilt or innocence, unlike the then standard blood typing, which could only eliminate certain people from the scenario.)
The story’s arc seemed clear. Kramer and her reporting partner, Sophie Bearman, would interview some of the grateful exonerees, talk to former colleagues, and assemble a complete picture of Burton, about whom little was known. It would be uplifting, affirming stuff.
That is, until Kramer spoke to a former trainee of Burton’s named Gina Demas, who had seen so many mistakes and problems with her mentor’s methodology that she blew the whistle on her and ultimately was removed from her job. Demas is still a firecracker, an intelligent observer with a memory undimmed by the decades. And a conscience.
Once Kramer pulled the Demas thread, more followed, and the Burton-as-angel narrative unraveled. It took a ton of research, making this a 12-episode podcast, but it’s addictive, full of odd little nuggets such as Burton’s membership in the High Cincinnatians Tall Club (she was five foot eleven), and the fact that she resembles a character in mystery writer Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta series.
Kramer learned that Burton’s notebooks were used for show-and-tell during trials, not saved in anticipation of the dawn of DNA. Burton actually favored the prosecution, and would change lab results to fit their favored perpetrator. That 13 men were exonerated by her work is the height of irony.
Because of Kramer’s investigation, revealing what amounted to evidence tampering by Burton, the state of Virginia is reviewing about 4,800 cases she worked on. This is the outcome every investigative journalist hopes for, but Kramer is adamant that Burton was not a lone bad apple; the problems with forensics labs, which can wield the power of life and death, are systemic and unfixable until the labs become truly independent from the law-enforcement agencies that run them.
Adagio is available to stream on Netflix. Admissible: Shreds of Evidence is available to listen to on Apple Podcasts
Lisa Henricksson reviews mysteries at AIR MAIL. She lives in New York City
