Family Values

THE WITNESS (B-minus) - The killing of Kitty Genovese outside a New York apartment building in 1964, as residents purportedly turned a deaf ear, spawned a cottage industry of sociological studies about bystanders and the psychology of crowds. She became a symbol. This documentary seeks to make her a person again.

Her brother Bill Genovese embarks on a mission to interview friends, colleagues, witnesses and the journalists who created and perpetuated the legend of 38 witnesses turning away from a long, brutal attack against a young woman in the big city. At the time, the shocking reports were a sure sign that postwar neighborliness was giving way to Vietnam-era selfishness.

This film does a good job of picking away at the myth and instead peeling some layers away from the woman herself. The director is newcomer James Solomon, but the driving force is Bill Genovese, who is bullheaded in his determination to unlock the mysteries surrounding his sister and her life more than 50 years ago.

Genovese goes straight to the source and tracks down a frail Abe Rosenthal (who died in 2006, giving you an idea of the breadth of this project), who continues to defend the original reporting on the front page of the New York Times, a story that starts to fall apart by the time you've made it through its opening paragraph. We also hear from the killer himself, Winston Moseley (who died in prison earlier this year), including a bizarre letter to Bill Genovese putting forth a conspiracy theory involving the mob.

But the most effective interviews are with the scattered New Yorkers who knew Kitty Genovese -- customers at the pub where she tended bar; former classmates; neighbors (including the woman who belatedly tried to save her); cops; and her lesbian lover, who modestly declines to be photographed on camera. These folks connect the dots and fill in the backstory to that iconic photo above. Rare film footage captures a dynamic, joyous young woman frolicking as if she had a long life ahead of her.

Bill Genovese is generally an interesting narrator. He himself was hit by tragedy in the '60s -- he lost his legs in Vietnam, an explanation that is held back till late in the movie. Too often, the story here is too much about Bill and his surviving siblings, and how they have been affected by the death of their sister. You get the feeling that the other siblings don't want much part of this project, and their group scenes feel like forced drama. And a climactic scene in which Bill arranges for an actress to re-create Kitty's screams at the very spot she was attacked -- while Bill writhes helplessly in his wheelchair. That indulgence is really for him only, and it adds nothing to our understanding of the case.

In some ways, "The Witness" shares a kinship with another dig into family archives, "51 Birch Street," in which one of the folks whose secrets were uprooted, tells the camera, "What a relief for someone to really know us." After 52 years of that face staring out at us from what is literally a mugshot, we know have the chance to see behind those soulful eyes and that Mona Lisa smirk and get to know Kitty Genovese as more than a pop-culture touchstone or a paragraph in a textbook, as a human being, faults and all, who was a friend, a neighbor, a lover -- a woman whose life was cut short at a moment when nobody seemed to care whether she lived or died.

GOING AWAY (B) - This is shaping up to be a year for promising debut features. Here, veteran actor Nicole Garcia settles behind the camera for the story (which she co-wrote) of a vagabond grade-school teacher who gets stuck minding one of his students (abandoned by his playboy father) and takes the boy on a road trip where they run across the kid's down-on-her-luck mother.

Garcia and co-writer Jacques Fieschi (last year's "Yves Saint Laurent") cleverly let the narrative ramble and roam like their characters do. You expect the story to be about the boy, Mathias, and you brace for some male bonding. But, as if this were a relay race, the focus shifts to his mother, Sandra (Louise Bourgoin), who is slumming at a beach restaurant near Montpellier, barely keeping her head above water financially. Just as we settle in with Sandra, the story tilts toward the teacher, Baptiste (Pierre Rochefort), and a journey through his past.

It's a fascinating device in a tale that unfolds over the course of a weekend, even if the script sometimes wilts under the weight of the heavy drama of these lost souls. Sandra has some thuggish investors after her, from a failed restaurant launch the year before. Baptiste has a disturbing reaction to a night of drinking,  flash of foreshadowing that gets explained at the very end.

Bourgoin and Rochefort make for a winning couple, a pair tossed together unexpectedly. He is moody, with a shock of hair and a three-day beard. Peering out of expressive eyes, she is lanky, with an exotic tattoo snaking around the right side of her neck. They exude loneliness and fall together naturally and tragically.

This holds up more to a general scrutiny of its overall structure than to a close analysis of each scene. Some dialogue clunks. ("I love you because you are sad.") The final twist from Baptiste's past feels forced and antiseptic.

But overall, this is a quietly effective debut film, with winning lead characters and that winding narrative, which provides a series of satisfying turns that toy with your expectations.