A black-gloved fist crashes into a female face. It connects with a disfiguring crunch of bone. It strikes time and again, each thump amplifying the damage until the broken, bloodied face is slurried beyond recognition.
Empathetic winces are audible from several rows back. Other audience members cover their eyes from the brutality, or battle the viscerally overwhelming scene by staring intently, as if intimidating an aggressor into backing down.
This scene, between Casey Affleck’s twisted sheriff Lou Ford, and Joyce, a prostitute played by Jessica Alba, is the most divisive moment in Michael Winterbottom’s adaptation of Jim Thompson’s pulp fiction novel The Killer Inside Me. It’s not cinema’s most graphically violent moment, but its combination of intimacy and defencelessness permeate it with revulsion.
“I wanted to show the brutality of what Lou’s doing, but also to allow for people to see how self-destructive and pointless it is,” explains Winterbottom. “Even as he’s doing it, Joyce is reminding him that she loves him to try to make him stop and to realise what he’s doing is so crazy. The point is to make people think about what he’s doing, and to feel the tragedy of what he’s doing.”
Winterbottom describes the scene as being a purely technical challenge, leaving the gritty emotions to the actors. “Jessica had a clear idea of how she wanted Joyce to be, so she got on with it,” he states with the fluid delivery of a man who gets things done. “Emotionally I think it was slightly harder for Casey, as he had to be the one who was being violent and I think it’s probably harder to get your head into that kind of space.”
Winterbottom has embraced controversy before, most notably with the unsimulated sex that featured heavily in 9 Songs, but it’s hardly a lineage of his filmography. With an undercurrent of laconic humour, The Killer Inside Me is stylishly atmospheric and features a stunning performance by Affleck as he morphs between vulnerable and psychotic. Loved by two women, his character’s desire for control descends into dangerous insanity.
“Lou’s very intelligent, but he pretends to be this slow, simple deputy sheriff,” concludes Winterbottom. “Casey’s brilliant at standing there and making you wonder what’s going on inside his head. It’s a real quality he has as an actor, and to a certain extent as a person.”
Words by Ben Hopkins
