Lost Girls  ★★★

MEMO to the makers of Lost Girls…don’t tell us in the first frame that the case remains ‘unsolved’.

That’s like settling down to watch a Dockers’ match and before the bounce they tell you we lost…again.

Or, even worse, ‘This game will end in a draw’.

I realise Liz Garbus, the director of this 2020 drama, is a documentary film-maker, it’s her first feature, based on actual events and perhaps she brought many of same sensibilities and approach.

But the opening statement still tends to cast a pall over much of what follows, particularly if you aren’t immediately familiar with the case, and I question why it is needed at all.

Based on a book by Robert Kolker, it tells the story of the 2010 disappearance of a young woman and her mother’s dogged pursuit of the case amid indifference from the police and public.

Mari Gilbert’s daughter Shannan is a sex worker who disappears while visiting a client in a well-off remote community in coastal Long Island, New York. It takes police more than 20 minutes to answer her 911 call that includes screams for help.

This attitude seems to permeate the investigation of not just Shannan’s disappearance but also that of several other missing young women in the same area who happened to be sex workers.

When bodies start turning up, the victims’ families, led by Mari, over a period stretching into years try to build awareness in the community and increase pressure on the police, including Mari’s ongoing series of personal encounters with the Commissioner of Police.

Apart from the interesting and emotional story, Lost Girls benefits greatly from the performances of Amy Ryan as Mari, Thomasin McKenzie (Leave No Trace and Jojo Rabbit) as one of Mari’s other daughters and Gabriel Byrne as Commissioner Dorper.

Even though Shannan is not a character in the film, Garbus and Kolker create a strong sense of her personality and the impact of her loss on the remaining members of the family. The film is also well shot and creates an interesting sense of place in a part of New York that we don’t often see presented.

At the end of the film I came to realise that Shannan was one of the alleged victims of the so-called Long Island serial killer who is believed to have murdered more than a dozen women over a 20-year period.

The case remains unsolved…surprise.