real Roy?

The setting of the family's early yeras is a place called Dorchester. As the storyline has the Boston police investigating and the fact Natalie travels to Boston, it's no doubt Dorchester, Massachusetts.

I grew up in the Jewish section of Dorchester, until my family and I moved from there to the suburbs in 1955.

While, now, I don't remember reading or hearing anything about the murder in the 70's, I think I'll do a Google search to try and find out something about the case.

Oh -- by the way -- I thought the movie was quite wonderful.

I had occasion to visit the Boards for this movie again tonight, and decided to do a little more digging in the Boston Globe archives about the mother's murder.

Here's a feature writeup that appeared around the time when "Behind the Red Door" was being released.

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RED DOOR' IS A PORTAL TO FILMMAKER'S PAST
Author(s): Renee Graham, Globe Staff
Date: January 11, 2003
Page: D1

"Sometimes you choose the project," said filmmaker Matia Karrell, "sometimes the project chooses you."

With "Behind the Red Door," Karrell's first feature film, the project chose her, although it is not a story she ever intended to tell. Based on true events, it is Karrell's intensely personal story about the two most devastating episodes of her life - the murder of her mother, and her brother's death from AIDS. Many years had passed, but Karrell felt compelled to find a way to articulate her unspeakable grief. "In order for me to go on with my life, I had to look at this," said Karrell, who directed the film, co-written with C.W. Cressler. "Kierkegaard said you must live forward, but life can only be understood backwards. This is my attempt to do that - to take something, and through these characters, look at it. That's the major reason. You have to give voice to it."

"Behind the Red Door," which premieres on Showtime tomorrow night at 8, is movie as memoir. Kyra Sedgwick plays Natalie, a New York photographer who returns to Massachusetts (the film was actually shot in St. John's, Newfoundland) to take care of her estranged brother, Roy, played by Kiefer Sutherland. While tending to Roy, Natalie is haunted by memories of their abusive father, as well as the circumstances surrounding their mother's murder.

"There's something about the private going public," Karrell said during an interview from her Los Angeles home. "There's something that happens when we speak out about things we've been holding onto either as secrets or shame, and I think it's how artists in general make sense of their lives. Through these characters you create, you're able to explore, investigate, and understand."

Watching Sedgwick and Sutherland play out familiar moments wasn't as wrenching as Karrell expected. It certainly helped that neither of the actors resembles Karrell or her brother, she said.

"It allowed them to have the freedom to create these characters in their own right. I didn't want them to mimic anything," she said. "Once you start directing, you have to give it to the actors. It's their lives, and the characters belong to them. I think Kiefer really captured the elegance, the biting humor, and the playfulness of my brother, the sardonic Cary Grant kind of thing. People who've seen it who knew my brother say Kiefer reminds them of my brother without looking anything like him."

Karrell and her brother grew up in Roslindale. She was 19 when her mother, Marie, was found murdered in her West Roxbury home in 1974. Police investigated, but never made an arrest, and the homicide remains unsolved. In the film, it is inferred that Natalie and Roy's father may have been responsible for their mother's death.

As far as her own theories go, Karrell said, "I wrote a character who is much more courageous than I am. She figures it out for herself. It's her belief. One of the reasons for doing the film was to better understand my life, and I believe I'm still going through the process of understanding it. It's just not black and white." Karrell has little contact with her father, who lives in Massachusetts.

Karrell began writing "Behind the Red Door" in 1996. She learned of her brother's illness on Feb. 15, 1989 - the same day she found out her live-action short film, "Cadillac Dreams," had been nominated for an Academy Award. Caring for her brother, who like Sutherland's character was also named Roy, resurrected Karrell's unexplored feelings about her mother's death.

"I thought I had put it in a nice package, understood it, and that was that," she said. "It wasn't until I moved in with my brother to take care of him that the memories began to spin. You don't know where they come from, but once they're there, you have to start dealing with them.

"When I finished the film, there was the sense that I had paid back a debt to my mother and my brother. The funny thing is, I didn't know I had owed a debt," Karrell said. "Your intuitive sense knows before your conscious mind, and it was obviously something I needed to do for them. I needed to honor them."