A faceblind review of “Faces in the crowd”

I’ll say this about Milla Jovovich — her face is quite distinctive! Throughout her 2011 movie, “Faces in the Crowd,” she was literally the only person I reliably recognized.

In “Faces in the Crowd,” she plays a woman who gets bonked on the head right after witnessing a serial killer slit someone’s throat. Mila* survives but her brain injury causes her to have prosopagnosia — and that’s a real problem because now this killer wants to kill HER.

One “interesting” choice made by the director was to hire multiple actors for every part. So, Mila’s boyfriend is played by several similar looking actors, which causes their face to change from scene to scene. I think this would have worked better if the characters had distinctive clothing or hair. That way, people who can remember faces would know that multiple people were supposed to be the same character, and the rest of us could keep track of the basic plot.

Luckily, the plot is quite basic. I should mention that this is not a good movie, so I don’t recommend watching it unless you, like me, are on a quest to watch every prosopagnosia movie or show. None of the characters act like normal human beings. Milla’s friends, husband and therapist are useless and strikingly unsympathetic. I mean, this beautiful lady just sustained a traumatic brain injury and watched someone get murdered and she is being stalked by a murderer — but they are all like, “Why are you acting so hysterical, weirdo?”

In one particularly weird scene at club, Milla’s friends posit that having prosopagnosia must be fun because you get to sleep with a different guy every night (even if you’re married or have a monogamous boyfriend.) I wonder if this is just a total misfire, or if this is in line with the experience of people who aquire prosopagnosia due to brain injury. Obviously this isn’t my experience at all — I mean, your partner has the same body and smells the same, sounds the same, does the same sorts of things, etc. But maybe people who are used to hanging identity on faces would feel that way. It would probably be more disorienting than fun, though.

What do you think?

*I never learned her character’s name so I will call her Milla.