La fille au bracelet

Near to the start, the victim's mother describes huge amounts of blood. With only the face being spared a savage attack. But during the trial, the scene-of-crime photos show no sign of any blood at all; just a few neat wounds. This dichotomy is so extreme that this viewer was entirely distracted from watching the remainder of the movie with any interest. What did it mean? Was it some sort of 'high art' concept? Was it the start of some sort of science fictional adventure? Do the French police wash bodies, launder bed-clothes and wash walls before taking a literally sanitized picture? What does it mean?

That's a question some of us parents are sometimes asked by our children. Children demand for privacy and we accept. But privacy turns into secrecy and our acceptance turns into ignorance at times bordering indifference. One horrible day, your world comes crashing down when you discover that your child isn't exactly what he/she you thought he/she was. Now, what would you choose to do? Still standby or abandon that child? This movie poses that question to you. Whatever you choose to do, I feel, you should be absolved of any blame. Because it is one hell of a question. As a father of a rebellious daughter, I shuddered when the movie was over. My world hasn't yet come down crashing. But that's something I dread everyday. Secretly. This movie made me face my fear. A very well made movie. Kudos to the entire team.

Firstly contrary to another review, there was *no* goof in presenting photos of the murder scene and the cuts sustained by the victim. Two separate photos were shown to the court: the first was of the murder scene with blood on the sheets and spatter on the wall: the second was what looked like a post-mortem photo showing the position of the cuts. The latter was never presented as having been taken at the scene.

On my impressions of the film, the whole court scene felt very realistic and yet shocking at the same time. How was it that the prosecution was able to inject so much surmise, inuendo and downright personal opinions without being challenged and such statements being struck from the record? Of course this is fiction, but I sincerely hope it does not represent how court cases are conducted in France!

If I speak strongly it's because the acting throughout was excellent, very naturalistic, from Lise through to her family and her lawyer. Not having seen the original film but read that in it the prosecution relies heavily on besmirching the character of the accused, that same tone was very much reflected in this film. I was gripped throughout.

You need to temper your expectations. This is not a whodunit or a thriller or a suspense. This is not even a courtroom drama for that matter (although it pretends to be one)!!

This is purely a girl and her family's experience when she's accused of murder.

Shows you, that as parents, we know very little about our kids' lives. Which was personally very connecting to me.

I liked the courtroom scenes but I didn't like that prosecutor one bit because she came across as being unprepared for the trial. She just made lots of sensational claims without any basis for them.

Other than that, i loved the mood of the movie throughout.

Completely free of any dramatic tension, a girl is tried for the murder of her best friend. The difference between an adversarial and inquisitorial justice system makes interpretation of the process a bit challenging but the prosecutor seemed to be saying since you can't prove it wasn't you it must have been you. All the old tropes of "she wasn't a virgin so she must have been a murderer" We've all seen Spiral so we know about investigating magistrates so it's still difficult to understand how this one made it to trial