In the mid-sixties, Fauna Hodel (India Eisley) , a young woman has come to Los Angeles to learn the secret of her birth.
As Fauna digs deeper into her origins, she becomes entangled in another mystery - the infamous murder of Elizabeth Short...
Based on a pair of true stories, I Am The Night is a strange beast.
It ends each episode with photographs of major characters, to remind the viewer that these people existed.
But most of the action in the story - the story itself - is mostly fictional.
I spent the miniseries engrossed but mystified by this decision.
The Black Dahlia is one of the most famous unsolved mysteries - it is fodder for conspiracy theorists and storytellers. The problem is that the story has no resolution.
The story of Fauna Hodel is strange although less bleak than that of Elizabeth Short.
The connections between the two are fascinating, but they do not make up enough of a story - at least for the makers of this miniseries.
What makes this story fascinating is how it ficitionalises a story from these components.
I am not sure how I feel about it - this felt like a story that should have been fully fictionalized, but perhaps the filmmakers thought there were so many bizarre elements of the real story that it could only work if it was presented in the form of a docudrama.
This miniseries feels like it should be a feature film - at no point was I bored, but it does feel over-extended.
India Eisley is solid as Fauna and Jefferson Mays is urbane and alien as George Hodel, but perversely the most fascinating character is completely fictional - Jay Singletary played by Chris Pine.
Pine is an actor I have more time for the more I see of him. There is a world-weariness and fragility to his performance which underlies his initial braggadociousness. It is a terrific performance that ties the whole project together.
Ultimately, I Am The Night is not completely successful. But the story is strange enough to be compelling, and the performances - particularly Pine’s - give it a weight that it might not have otherwise had.
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