Love You to Death

Camile is known as a young woman who has spent years in a wheelchair with a list of illnesses. Her mother Rossie cares for her, the community admires the mother, donations arrive. The girl has no illness at all. She can only say so to a man she meets online, and it ends in murder. Alex Kalymnios directed. Marcia Gay Harden plays the mother, Emily Skeggs the daughter. The source is a real case: Gypsy Rose Blanchard and her mother Dee Dee Blanchard in America. The film addresses Munchausen syndrome by proxy directly. It is a television production with a budget to match; the plot moves fast and the staging is plain. Harden plays the mother without turning her into a monster; everything suggesting she genuinely loves her daughter stays on screen at the same time. At the centre is one question: why did nobody notice anything for years. Who it is for: viewers who like true crime adaptations and want to watch Harden. Who it is not for: anyone expecting cinematic scale; the film stays in television language.