Karla	by M. Faust

Less than an hour away from Buffalo, some of the most horrifying killings in memory took place in the late 1980s, as Saint Catherines resident Paul Bernardo raped, tortured and killed at least three young women. If you’re from here you certainly remember reports of the trial in the early 1990s, and the outrage that many Canadians felt when Bernardo’s wife, Karla Homolka, was sentenced to only 12 years, despite evidence that she participated fully in the killings—including that of her own teenaged sister. Canadians were outraged again in 2005 when an American movie about Bernardo and Homolka was announced, to be released at just about the same time that Homolka was to be released. (The film was scheduled to be shown that year at the Monteral World Film Festival but pulled due to pressure from a commercial sponsor, an unfortunate precedent.)

Karla begins a theatrical run in Buffalo this week, just ahead of a DVD release. It appears to have been made with relatively honorable intentions, but it’s a confused work nonetheless. As played by Laura Prepon (Donna of That 70’s Show, and better than you might expect), Karla describes herself as more sinned against than sinning, the victim of an unfortunate obsession with a charismatic but abusive husband (Bernardo is played by Misha Collins). The events are framed as her testimony to a psychiatrist (Patrick Bauchau) examining her for possible parole, and I presume that the script uses this structure to offer us the possibility of an unreliable narrator. But the direction doesn’t back that up: Despite an end title noting that she was denied parole for having an apparently sociopathic personality, the film does nothing to dispute her version of events, which amount to a Lifetime-type movie with a little extra sex and violence. It should be noted that the sex and violence are non-exploitative, certainly not as much as they could be—but perhaps less explicit than they should have been, especially compared to the explicit beatings Homolka receives from her husband. When you come away from a film like this feeling more sorry for the killer than her victims, there’s something wrong.

(NB: Buffalonians will get some extra amusement at noting the incorrect details of this depiction of our neighbor to the north, none more so than the border crossing consisting of a single-lane road staffed by a highway patrol car. Though if that really does exists, I wish someone would tell me so I could avoid those traffic tie-ups on the Peace Bridge.)