Unbelievable

With Kaitlyn Dever, Toni Colette, Merrit Wever, Scott Lawrence, Eric Lange,Brooke Smith and many others.

An interesting series to watch. From IMdB I understand this series is based on true happened events. Which is unfortunate, especially when you see the first episode. I don’t recommend watching it. Not just when you’re a rape survivor, but because it seems so unrealistic, that a rape victim would be met with such vile, bastardly rude bloody cops who care too much about their own finger twiddlings than actually helping a human being.
Why the student never got any female agent to care for her, I will never know. For a long time in this series it even remains unclear if what happened to her, Marie Adler, happened in the 70s or 60s or something?
For comparison: watch the first episode of the second season of Broadchurch, and you will notice a significant difference in dealings with rape victims.

One of the more frustating things is that Marie Adler stops sharing her actual thoughts with those who surround her. She numbs down, becomes introvert. This because the people she once trusted to be on her side, talk behind her back. As a result, she is so frozen she can’t even talk about what that does to her as a result. The cops of Lynnwood…if this truly happened in this way (for the sake of the series I do hope it was dramatized a bit, or these men are truly unworthy of their badge) they should make a formal statement and discharge themselves for being as guilty to any of the unsolved rapes there as the rapist is. This behaviour is beyond evil.
To make a young woman feel like she did the judicial system unjustice because THEY chose not to believe her…I was so incredibly sorry for that girl that she didn’t get to meet with Jodi or Rasmussen.
I also don’t understand how her therapist and counsellors and group of living were so eagerly willing to believe that she had made it all up. None of them should ever be working with someone that vulnerable again. I was amazed and not by Dara, the woman who I still mostly recognise from the one that, in Silence of the Lambs, was trapped in that well. It makes perfect sense that her face is the one that sends out the message ‘trust’ to anyone who has lost it.

 

Tall Girl

Though this film isn’t all that bad, it’s only mildly entertaining. I am surprised that Netflix has given this film any airtime at all, as being tall is not the biggest issue I’ve heard of these days.
The contrast between the sisters couldn’t be bigger indeed: tall sister versus beauty queen and thank goodness their mother treats them differently in that aspect, but still.
I am a tall girl (not as tall as she is, but there’s only a mild inch between her tallness and an inch or two in shoesizes), and I’ve actually never had to endure any of the silly comments this girl gets.
I do recall a boy coming at me, trying to playfully intimidate me, then I stood up, with the same amount of playfulness, and he was smiling as I was far taller than he had initially assumed.

The part where her sworn enemy Kimmy plays a trick on the phone should have been taken seriously and not a way to blame herself. Kimmy is an utterly vile bitch who deserved a slap in the face. Verbally or nonverbally. A best friend who doesn’t see that, I don’t trust.
A best friend who tries to actively stop a romance between his friend and an exchange student should have punched himself in the guts aswell.

The tall girl herself accepts her faith as any Jane Austen heroine does, but in current times, this shouldn’t be needed.

I can’t say I would recommend this film as it barely has any reality on show about how these things go. Even the cast isn’t as mixed as you’d expect in this time and era….

 

Demain Tout Commence

With the fabulous Omar Sy ( do NOT tell me you haven’t seen Intouchables, please?!) Clémence Poésy (Harry Potter, Last Love), Antoine Bertrand and Gloria Colston.

Samuel is enjoying life as a bachelor, when, after a night of partying hard, a one night stand is in front of him, with a baby. Telling him the baby is his. She has a lot of bags with her, asks him for money for the cab she just came in.
He thinks.
Kristin Stuart dissappears from Samuel and the baby, named Gloria, only to return after about eight years.

While Kristin was gone, Samuel has been a perfect, albeit not very grownup, father for Gloria. He has found a friend while searching for Kristin, which means Gloria has grown up with a single dad and his gay friend Bernie, who feels to be just as much Gloria’s father as Samuel is himself.
Samuel has made it his mission to give the girl not only a weird home (where she is VERY happy), but also the thought that her mother is a secret agent who is simply flying across the world to visit every country possible, and so that is the reason she has never come to visit Gloria and her father.
A far better solution than to tell such a young girl the awful truth, in my opinion.
That what is shown of her childhood is far from anything that would seem realistic, giving the film a very childish, but lively and lovely vibe.
Which is exactly the reason that the Kramer VS Kramer bit around the middle, didn’t quite catch my appealing. Nor the dreadful end. I have no idea why the makers of this film thought that was bloody necessary?!

Aside that, this film goes to show that, indeed, a family isn’t purely made out of DNA. It’s presence, it’s being there, it’s making sure that you know what goes around in that little head of the young ones. Samuel provides exactly that.
OK, he doesn’t always send Gloria to school because of his busy schedule as a stuntman, and yes, he still doesn’t speak English so Gloria has to translate everything into French for him, even after eight years of living there. Meanwhile, he makes bloody sure that Gloria is shielded for all types of bad information that she could possibly get, that the world just isn’t all that pretty and lovely.

It was also a pleasure to see Omar Sy again.
The things the film is missing in dept, is, amongst other things, the fact that we will never know what the hell made the mother leave her own child. She never explains. And like in Kramer VS Kramer, you want to know.

 

Unite 42

After having watched Black Spot I couldn’t leave this one unwatched.
It doesn’t resemble each other one bit though, except for the spoken language (French), one actor, and the fact that it is about police again. OK and the fact that Unite 42 only seems to handle particular cases.
They are into hacking. Not in the truly legal way, so to speak.

The episodes are easy to watch; not too difficult stories, it’s entertaining and it has a likewise development each time: a murder takes place or a body is found, Unite 42 goes after it. All of them have a life of their own, with some this is shown a bit more privately than others.
After the first few episodes you kind of get the gist of how it’s supposed to go, so the revelation of who did it no longer truly surprises, but it keeps being entertaining enough to finish the entire season.

A light refreshment, so to speak.