Astonishing.
When have we ever seen a documentary series where the main suspect, convicted in France but not extradited by Ireland, is one of the main players on the screen, almost 25 years after the fact?
“Sophie, a Murder in West Coast”, the original title of this Anglo-Saxon Netflix production, available on the platform from June 30, grabs you and the three hours pass like one or two minutes, those of a sordid crime one night before Christmas Eve 1996.
Sophie Toscan du Plantier, socialite but also solitary, came to relax in her Irish sheepfold lost in the moor, facing the sea. We know that that evening, she opened the door to someone.
Her keys remained in the lock inside when the door closed behind her forever.
The book she was reading remained open on the kitchen table.
She was dragged out, slaughtered, after defending herself.
PODACST.
The savage murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier: return to an extraordinary case
Part of the mystery lies in the unpreparedness of the Irish local police, who did not secure the crime scene, and lost some key elements. The County of Cork had not known the slightest murder for a century ... We then enter the noir novel: the first journalist on the spot, the one who will very quickly welcome his French colleagues, is called Ian Bailey, a skittish Englishman who has retired to this corner of Ireland so wild that it is difficult to access. Very quickly, everything confuses the local journalist. He knows too much. He has deep markings on his face and arms. Why is he cleaning his long black coat in a bucket of water on December 24? And that fire where he made clothes disappear?
A woman saw her wandering on a bridge that night.
He's been arrested, twice.
But justice considers that the evidence is not sufficient for a trial even if France sentenced him to 25 years in prison in absentia in 2019 without obtaining his extradition.
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Heartbreaking portrait of a media woman killed where she loved to flee the world, story of a family's struggle, a thriller that no author could have imagined, "Sophie" also provokes enormous anger at a time when the violence against women is more shocking than twenty years ago.
Because Ian Bailey admits at least one thing.
Yes, he violently hit his own wife a few months before the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier, to the point that she was hospitalized.
But he adds, as if he wasn't responsible for anything about the blows: “For the tango, it takes two.
"Sophie" also takes us into the brain of a narcissistic pervert without remorse, who enjoys his own media coverage.
EDITOR'S RATING: 4.5 / 5
“Sophie, the Toscan du Plantier affair”
on Netflix, documentary series in three one-hour episodes.
Available June 30.