Marion’s Lillies: A Murder Mystery Upended by a Psychological Thriller

Marcello Mantero’s Marion’s Lillies takes an ambitious 38 minutes to paint dual portraits of a grieving man and the one who killed his wife. Shrouded in mystery so dense, the search for answers only leads to the haze of psychosis. With everyone else already moving on, what can a grief laden husband do but take matters into his own hands?

The only person to take pity on David (Neil Bishop) is Andy (John Britton), an aged man surviving the streets. Their bond is tenuous, David too preoccupied with the utterly elusive killer to maintain any bonds, even the one that—unwillingly—feeds his obsession. He cuts off his family (Pip Boulter) and friends (James Viller as Alexander) with various degrees of aggression, consumed by the mirage of revenge. The killer is known only by descriptive labels: white, between 40 and 60, tall, thin, wearing a long, dark coat. No fingerprints, no face, not even the decency to have a telltale smell. The film opens with his back receding into the background, the silhouette of the dead Marion (Melissa Steven) left behind in the dark alley. Soon enough, his identity becomes less of a concern as David descends deeper into his evidence and speculation laden rabbit hole.

Bishop has the most screentime and he largely does it justice. Early on the catatonic grief is already laced with the harsh strains of nascent rage. With time it ferments and festers until—even though the viewer only knows him since the violent end of his old life—David becomes just about unrecognisable, and frighteningly so. Even without physical aggression, David is unnerving, as in the scene in which he puts an end to an old, deep friendship.

The film makes use of many of the tropes associated with the fridged wife subgenre, including home videos of the halcyon days, contrasting starkly with the present. It aims to immerse the viewer thoroughly into David’s psyche, the murder mystery abandoned in favour of the psychological thriller. The world, seen through David’s eyes, is overcast and glum when it is not plainly lost in the shadows of the night. His house is reduced to the bedroom: a mattress on the floor, a PC for deep dives into hellish niches of crime, and a wall covered with the customary evidence trackers. The floor is heaped with litter.

It returns periodically to Andy. His well meaning attempts to help David bounce back to the intentions, their target untouched and uninterested. It is an unequal friendship in fresh form, and the most moving aspect of the narrative. Where the Alexander scene was a peak, the Andy scenes are more quotidian, more consistent, and because of that consistently built character, more affecting in its conclusion.

Marion’s Lillies ends as a bleak, tragic circle. The answers are laid bare, the loose ends tied, and all of it with an offhandedness befitting a psychopath. What normal person goes around killing people after all?

Watch Marion’s Lilies Short Film Trailer