A good movie

To be honest, I had no idea what to expect from this flick. In fact, my sister actually gave me this DVD as a gift. Anyway, it turned out to be a feature film from the makers of ‘Strip-tease’, an awesome TV-show we used to watch back in the 90’s. The basic concept was to shoot some documentaries but without any comments and interviews resulting in some vintage TV-reality before it became some of the worst trash-TV ever produced. Anyway, this movie definitely kept the vibe of the TV-show. I have to admit that it was surprised that it was taking place in Belgium but it actually made sense since ‘Strip-tease’ was actually a Belgian TV-show and not a French one. The interesting thing, at least for me, was that even if they didn’t judge Anne Gruwez (pun intended), I don’t think they were extremely positive about her either. It was also another interesting detail. Indeed, at some point, one of her co-workers, I think a policeman, mentioned that the FBI might not be really more efficient than them. Well, another similarity with the US justice system where 80 or 90% of the convicts are black was that it seems that most of the convicts in Belgium are of North African origin which was maybe not really shocking but certainly sad to see. Another thing that bothered me was the fact that this judge was rather arrogant and patronizing with pretty much all her male convicts but, towards the end, when she was handling the case of a delusional woman who had killed her young boy with her bare hands, she was actually rather patient  and gentle. Of course, you had some wild or even surrealist scenes which was always a trademark of this TV-show, the best example being when they went to exhume a dead body from a graveyard. Eventually, the end-result was a unique look on the Belgian judicial system but the lack of context and background did lessen its impact, I’m afraid. Anyway, to conclude, it was definitely a decent watch and it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.