The last few decades has seen operas being created out of everything from Robert Altman‘s cult favorite “A Wedding” to the outrageous shenanigans of “The Jerry Springer Show,” so it was perhaps inevitable that something like “London Road” — which sets transcripts of eyewitness accounts regarding the serial killing of prostitutes — would come along to marry the ever-popular genres of musical and true-crime.
As ideas go, it’s certainly an interesting one, with cast members singing testimony verbatim, down to the last “um,” and it calls to mind “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” a movie where merchants and mechanics sang every line of the dialogue, even when it was about fixing cars or closing up the shop. Adapting the successful British stage musical, writer Alecky Blythe, composer Adam Cork and director Rufus Norris often hit on ideas and moments that are true and chilling, but the underlying gimmick wears a bit thin by the end of the 91-minute running time.
The film is set in 2006 in the town of Ipswich, England, a quiet community rocked by the murders of five prostitutes. Residents were terrified and disturbed by the homicides, although they had also been quite upset about the presence of the streetwalkers in the first place, and once a culprit is apprehended, they follow his trial with great interest.
It’s an organic three-act structure: the murders take place around Christmastime (allowing for wonderfully unsettling moments like a holiday market where women feel vulnerable and men feel accused), the arrest and trial, and then the neighborhood’s spring gardening competition, organized to lift morale and to show the beleaguered street in a positive light.
The prostitutes, of course, have their own story that the residents and the media mostly ignore, so it’s fitting that we hear from them relatively late in the film. That’s a subtle choice, but as “London Road” continues, the film overstates its point about the suffering of these women versus the obnoxious, bourgeois residents who treat them like little more than a threat to property values. It’s a salient argument, but the movie delivers it so stridently that it undoes the musical’s better moments.
In turning the real-life testimony into songs, Blythe tends to focus on a few lines of dialogue, repeating them over and over within each number, an effect that gets numbing fast. Once we hear someone say something, in tune, we know they’re going to say it another four or five times.
Olivia Colman (“The Night Manager,” “The Lobster”) leads the ensemble as Julie, and while the story has many perspectives, it’s mostly through her eyes that we experience what’s happening. She gives a delicately crafted performance for as long as the film allows her to, but eventually she must become a monster for the movie to make its point. Tom Hardy, turning up for one song as a cabbie, makes a memorable appearance — we know from “Locke,” after all, that he’s a master at driving and acting at the same time — and he’s chilling as a character who may or may not know just a little too much about serial killers.
The cinematography by Danny Cohen (“Florence Foster Jenkins”) has that washed-out look that will be familiar to fans of British TV series that shoot outdoors, but it’s a fitting choice for the material, since the passing of the seasons and the general drabness of Ipswich both play a real part in the storytelling. Choreographer Javier de Frutos (“Game of Thrones”) quite brilliantly creates opportunities for movement in places like buses and cafes that communicate the characters’ tensions without looking overly stylized within the real-life locations.
As a 20-minute short or even a 50-minute TV program, “London Road” might maintain its sharpness and its potency, but as a feature film, its cleverness wears a bit thin and its messaging gets too overblown. But if someone is planning to take “Making a Murderer” to Broadway, this murder-musical might provide some valuable hints about what to do — and what not to do.