She
is not one of those sugar-and-spice girls. In fact, she is a rather pushy kid.
She might even be more than that, but it is hard to tell for sure during the
course of Esther Hegarty’s short film adaption of Truman Capote’s story Miriam (trailer here), which screens
during the 2014 San Diego Film Festival.
Miriam
Miller is rather taken aback when a precocious young girl approaches her in a
cinema. It seems the deceptively innocent lass claimed the widowed Miller as adult
companion to gain entry to the film. They also happen to be namesakes—a fact
that little interests the younger Miriam. The elderly woman probably would have
forgotten the encounter had the girl not turned up at her flat later that
evening. Miller is justifiably put off by Miriam’s unexpected presence, but she
is alarmingly difficult to keep out and even harder to eject.
Representing
Capote’s gothic impulses (transplanted to the UK), Miriam will comes as a bit of a surprise to fans of Breakfast at Tiffany’s (although the
novel is considerably darker than the film), but it is not exactly In Cold Blood either. In fact, Hegarty’s
screen treatment is particularly effective, because it keeps viewers uncertain
whether they are watching an outright horror film or simply a rather dark drama
of human frailty.
Karen
Lewis (daughter-in-law of the late great Richard Attenborough) is terrific as
the increasingly panicked Mrs. Miller, vividly conveying her effort to maintain
her proper British composure. Young Annabel Parsons is certainly creepy as her
unwelcome guest. In his final screen appearance, Harry Potter alumnus Roger Lloyd Pack is also quite ominous, in a
distinguished kind of way, as the mysterious old man.
