Labyrinth of Lies

Labyrinth of Lies exudes a childlike confidence akin to a Rousseau painting, and whatever it lacks in nuance and good taste it makes up for in its mix of heart-on-sleeve moralism, pulp drama, classic form and ethereal rhythms. Co-written and directed by Giulio Ricciarelli, the film takes place in Germany 1958, long enough after the war for Germans to have completely forgotten their own atrocities, and the story centers around the real-life exposure of the horrors at Auschwitz. It makes for a curious inversion of the whodunit, since we're unraveling a mystery where we already know the identity of the murderers, and the investigators are the ones forced to reckon with a legacy of horror. The script is almost doltish at times, and the protagonist's journey from cartoonish straight arrow to cartoonish cynical drunk practically invites laughter, but the film possesses a wide-eyed, Nancy Drew sincerity that's hard to resist. D.B.