This was entertaining enough to watch, but if you are the sort of person who likes to think about evidence and suspects then it will drive you mad because it tells the story in a way that deliberately leaves out some facts until the end - since if you knew them it would spoil the drama.
The story is told somewhat backwards, with evidence that is based on other evidence being revealed before the earlier evidence is then discredited. For example, towards the end a new character enters the story who claims she saw the suspect's coat being soaked in a barrel. However, we learn that the witness who saw the suspect wearing the coat lied about who she saw. So if the witness lied about the coat, how could the other witness see it soaking in a barrel?
The basic premise is that a French woman who is married to a famous French Movie producer visits West Cork every Christmas to get away from Paris. Then she is found dead, murdered.
Police are clueless. There has not been a murder in this area for 100 years. Suspicion falls on a local reporter covering the case. This guy becomes the only real suspect, particularly in the eyes of the documentary crew. Evidence is slight though. He lives about 2.5 miles from her, and a motorist claims to have seen him on the road near the murdered woman's house (but in the opposite direction from his house, which one guy does point out as making no sense but it's easy to miss.)
One thing that does make the documentary interesting is that they interview the suspect a lot. He gets a lot of screen time. He's a somewhat sinister looking dude, and everyone makes a point of talking about how tall and strong he is. He looks like a killer, and that seems to be enough for most of the locals, the police, and the documentary crew. His personality is annoying too. He's a smug prick, so you have little sympathy for him.
The documentary only makes passing remarks that there is virtually no real evidence against the guy. They trot out a huge cadre of very unreliable- seeming witnesses. I don't want to say that these people are lying - it's more that so much time has passed since the murder (25 years) that they seem to be believing each other's speculation and taking it as truth. For example, one problem for the case was that there was no evidence to show the suspect knew the murdered woman. There was no evidence linking him to her, and no motive. Then, 20 years after the murder, one of the murdered women's friends back in France suddenly remembers that the murdered women said she was meeting a writer - the suspect being a journalist. Convenient. You'd think she would have remembered that earlier since it is a critical piece of evidence.
Information is given to you out of order. Towards the end, we learn that the suspect beat his girlfriend. It turns out that this happened 6 months before the murder and everyone in the village - who already dislike the guy - knew about it. That casts a lot of doubt on these witnesses, since it seems like most of their conviction that he is guilty of murder comes from this incident.
As the case progresses, we learn that the key witness who saw the suspect near the murder scene retracts her statement. The documentary tries to leave it ambiguous about whether she lied or whether she backed down because the suspect threatened her. However, she makes it very clear that she made the whole thing up, and that she identified the suspect because the police pointed him out. Bizarrely, the family of the deceased woman refuse to believe that she lied, even though she said so, because without her evidence there is nothing but gossip.
There is a lot of character assassination evidence for the suspect. He's a jerk. He beat his girlfriend. Several people claim that he confessed to the crime, although they are not very credible witnesses (the main one being a 14 year old boy). Most of the people interviewed are artists, psychics, writers - people with a lot of imagination. They talk about visions and omens, and spirits. They all have their artwork proudly on display behind them. It wasn't convincing me of the suspect's guilt. There was one man who was sat in a plain kitchen, who did not seem to be selling anything, and he ended up concluding that people just had it in for the suspect. I tend to believe him.
In the end, the French family hold a bizarre trial in Paris in 2019 where the suspect is convicted and sentenced to 25 years in his absence. It was a legitimate trial according to French law (that does not require "beyond reasonable doubt"), except their case revolved around believing a woman who admitted she lied, and the suddenly recalled memories of family members and acquaintances. Sad as it may sound, you get the sense most of them went through with it to give the murdered woman's son some closure. Certainly, the woman's father seemed unconvinced. The French tried to get the suspect extradited, but the Irish prosecution service deny extradition because, frankly, the proceedings were laughable. The entire French case was "We've been convinced it was this guy for 20 years, and even though there is no evidence and it turns out the Irish police had very dubious practices, since we've believed it for so long it must be true." To the documentary's credit, it does have a few people pointing out how flawed the French trial was.
All in all, I cannot say I was bored in the 2.5 hours it took to watch this, although I was frustrated at times and rolling my eyes a lot. The whole thing could have been covered in 30 minutes, since there was absolutely no evidence other than witness hearsay (I wouldn't even call it circumstantial evidence). The documentary carefully withholds evidence that discredits other evidence until the end, to keep up the drama.
Closing thought. The woman's husband was a famous French movie producer. Think Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein. He is (or was) powerful and influential. He knew his wife had an affair and she was seeking divorce. He had financial problems and a huge life insurance policy on his wife. The documentary tells you all this because this is the angle the journalist was following when he became a suspect. However, the documentary dismisses it very quickly because the police claim that the killer must have had local knowledge (the same police who we later find out lost all the DNA evidence and bungled everything.) They ignore that quite a few people in France knew where the woman lived, and had even visited her. My point is, the documentary stays well away from the rich and powerful people who were also the only people with a motive.
The story is told somewhat backwards, with evidence that is based on other evidence being revealed before the earlier evidence is then discredited. For example, towards the end a new character enters the story who claims she saw the suspect's coat being soaked in a barrel. However, we learn that the witness who saw the suspect wearing the coat lied about who she saw. So if the witness lied about the coat, how could the other witness see it soaking in a barrel?
The basic premise is that a French woman who is married to a famous French Movie producer visits West Cork every Christmas to get away from Paris. Then she is found dead, murdered.
Police are clueless. There has not been a murder in this area for 100 years. Suspicion falls on a local reporter covering the case. This guy becomes the only real suspect, particularly in the eyes of the documentary crew. Evidence is slight though. He lives about 2.5 miles from her, and a motorist claims to have seen him on the road near the murdered woman's house (but in the opposite direction from his house, which one guy does point out as making no sense but it's easy to miss.)
One thing that does make the documentary interesting is that they interview the suspect a lot. He gets a lot of screen time. He's a somewhat sinister looking dude, and everyone makes a point of talking about how tall and strong he is. He looks like a killer, and that seems to be enough for most of the locals, the police, and the documentary crew. His personality is annoying too. He's a smug prick, so you have little sympathy for him.
The documentary only makes passing remarks that there is virtually no real evidence against the guy. They trot out a huge cadre of very unreliable- seeming witnesses. I don't want to say that these people are lying - it's more that so much time has passed since the murder (25 years) that they seem to be believing each other's speculation and taking it as truth. For example, one problem for the case was that there was no evidence to show the suspect knew the murdered woman. There was no evidence linking him to her, and no motive. Then, 20 years after the murder, one of the murdered women's friends back in France suddenly remembers that the murdered women said she was meeting a writer - the suspect being a journalist. Convenient. You'd think she would have remembered that earlier since it is a critical piece of evidence.
Information is given to you out of order. Towards the end, we learn that the suspect beat his girlfriend. It turns out that this happened 6 months before the murder and everyone in the village - who already dislike the guy - knew about it. That casts a lot of doubt on these witnesses, since it seems like most of their conviction that he is guilty of murder comes from this incident.
As the case progresses, we learn that the key witness who saw the suspect near the murder scene retracts her statement. The documentary tries to leave it ambiguous about whether she lied or whether she backed down because the suspect threatened her. However, she makes it very clear that she made the whole thing up, and that she identified the suspect because the police pointed him out. Bizarrely, the family of the deceased woman refuse to believe that she lied, even though she said so, because without her evidence there is nothing but gossip.
There is a lot of character assassination evidence for the suspect. He's a jerk. He beat his girlfriend. Several people claim that he confessed to the crime, although they are not very credible witnesses (the main one being a 14 year old boy). Most of the people interviewed are artists, psychics, writers - people with a lot of imagination. They talk about visions and omens, and spirits. They all have their artwork proudly on display behind them. It wasn't convincing me of the suspect's guilt. There was one man who was sat in a plain kitchen, who did not seem to be selling anything, and he ended up concluding that people just had it in for the suspect. I tend to believe him.
In the end, the French family hold a bizarre trial in Paris in 2019 where the suspect is convicted and sentenced to 25 years in his absence. It was a legitimate trial according to French law (that does not require "beyond reasonable doubt"), except their case revolved around believing a woman who admitted she lied, and the suddenly recalled memories of family members and acquaintances. Sad as it may sound, you get the sense most of them went through with it to give the murdered woman's son some closure. Certainly, the woman's father seemed unconvinced. The French tried to get the suspect extradited, but the Irish prosecution service deny extradition because, frankly, the proceedings were laughable. The entire French case was "We've been convinced it was this guy for 20 years, and even though there is no evidence and it turns out the Irish police had very dubious practices, since we've believed it for so long it must be true." To the documentary's credit, it does have a few people pointing out how flawed the French trial was.
All in all, I cannot say I was bored in the 2.5 hours it took to watch this, although I was frustrated at times and rolling my eyes a lot. The whole thing could have been covered in 30 minutes, since there was absolutely no evidence other than witness hearsay (I wouldn't even call it circumstantial evidence). The documentary carefully withholds evidence that discredits other evidence until the end, to keep up the drama.
Closing thought. The woman's husband was a famous French movie producer. Think Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein. He is (or was) powerful and influential. He knew his wife had an affair and she was seeking divorce. He had financial problems and a huge life insurance policy on his wife. The documentary tells you all this because this is the angle the journalist was following when he became a suspect. However, the documentary dismisses it very quickly because the police claim that the killer must have had local knowledge (the same police who we later find out lost all the DNA evidence and bungled everything.) They ignore that quite a few people in France knew where the woman lived, and had even visited her. My point is, the documentary stays well away from the rich and powerful people who were also the only people with a motive.
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