Amanda Knox, who turned a global headline in 2007, when, as an American pupil spending a yr in Perugia, Italy, she was (wrongly) accused of the homicide and sexual assault of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, is now the topic, and government producer, of “The Twisted Story of Amanda Knox,” an eight-part docudrama premiering Wednesday on Hulu. (Her boyfriend of 1 week, Raffaele Sollecito, additionally wrongly accused, doesn’t appear to have garnered related consideration, which could let you know one thing about misogyny within the prurient press, and its viewers.)
The “Twisted Story” within the title — odd for a narrative of homicide, rape and false imprisonment — means that we’re about to see one thing kind of pleasant, like “The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack” or “The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants,” an impression underscored by a prologue within the model of “Amélie,” the whimsical French movie the couple was elsewhere watching on the night time of the homicide; it ties the sufferer, the accused and her prosecutor/persecutor collectively in a kind of fairy story. Just like the very lengthy end-title “any similarity” disclaimer, concluding “The sequence contains Amanda Knox’s perspective on occasions associated to the homicide of Meredith Kercher,” it permits the sequence to be one thing lower than true: a story.
Individuals inform themselves tales to dwell, to haul out that Joan Didion quote as soon as once more, which unavoidably requires making up tales about different folks. These occasions concerned lots of people, solely one in every of whom is an government producer of this sequence, primarily based on her memoir, “Ready To Be Heard.” (Knox co-wrote the finale, as effectively.) One assumes that a few of these different folks may see this undertaking as exploitation, or object to how they’ve been represented, although any dissenting voices can be drowned by a publicity machine that can market this as a real story, disclaimer apart. In gentle of the sequence, Knox has been just lately profiled within the New York Instances, alongside star Grace Van Patten, and within the Hollywood Reporter, alongside fellow government producer and scandal survivor Monica Lewinsky, who inspired her to make the sequence.
These are qualities — faults? — “Twisted Story” shares with each docudrama ever, a problematic style a lot beloved by filmmakers and actors; nonetheless, as often as such initiatives come up, particularly within the age of true crime, we wouldn’t nonetheless be speaking about “Citizen Kane” at the moment if it merely had been “Citizen Hearst.” We should always at the very least take into account as accountable viewers and residents that what we’re seeing right here, nonetheless factual in its essential factors, scrupulous in its particulars, and interesting in its philosophy, and nonetheless faithfully the actors embody their real-life fashions, it’s unavoidably an impression of the reality, constructed out with imagined scenes and conversations and made to play upon your emotions. It isn’t journalism. And to be clear, once I communicate of those characters under, I’m referring solely to how they’re portrayed within the sequence, to not the folks whose names they share.
Francesco Acquaroli as Giuliano Mignini and Roberta Mattei as Monica Napoleoni, the investigators on the case, in “The Twisted Story of Amanda Knox.”
(Andrea Miconi / Disney)
Created by Ok.J. Steinberg (“This Is Us”), the sequence is well-acted, well-written, impressively mounted, tonally contradictory, chronologically disjointed, overlong, annoying, exhausting, attention-grabbing each for its topic and stagecraft, and briefly inspirational, as Amanda (Van Patten) — arrested, jailed, convicted, acquitted, re-convicted and undoubtedly re-acquitted — turns into a voice within the innocence motion (“My freedom mattered and I used to be going to take advantage of it so long as I had it”) and returns to Italy, a spouse and mom, for one thing like closure.
Echoing the 2016 Netflix documentary “Amanda Knox,” which tells the story (as much as that time) in a streamlined however thought-provoking 90 minutes, there was some care to signify completely different factors of view, with episodes devoted to Raffaele and prosecutor cum investigator Giuliano Mignini (Francesco Acquaroli), additionally launched “Amélie”-style. (As to Kercher, we hear solely that “she likes to sunbathe and dance and skim thriller novels” — although something extra could be presumptuous.) Raffaele, the superhero-loving son of a troubled mom, made himself right into a “protector.” Mignini, who misplaced a brother to “lawlessness,” sees his work as heaven-sent — although he was additionally impressed by Gino Cervi as Georges Simenon’s detective hero within the Sixties TV sequence “Le inchieste del commissario Maigret.” (He adopts that character’s pipe and hat.) “I made a vow to God,” he says, narrating, “irrespective of the disapproval or dissent, deviant, ritual murders wouldn’t go unpublished on my watch.”
On the premise of Amanda being a loud American, and a self-described weirdo, whose response to information of the homicide struck some as insufficiently emotional; from bits and items of supposed bodily proof, later discounted; and from Mignini’s personal notions — together with his feeling relating to the physique, that “solely a lady would cowl a lady with a blanket” — the police shortly assemble an elaborate, fully imagined concept primarily based on a intercourse sport gone mistaken. (That Knox was in possession of a vibrator and a few condoms and introduced males to the condominium she shared with Kercher and two Italian women seemingly branded her, in 2007, as a pervert.)
Subjected to an especially lengthy interrogation with out ample illustration in a language she imperfectly understands, and by which she has bother making herself understood — detective superintendent Monica Napoleoni (Roberta Mattei) is the offended Javert — Knox indicators a false confession that additionally implicates her generally boss, Patrick Lumumba (Souleymane Seye Ndiaye). She shortly recants, to little avail. (Knox has not been acquitted of slandering Lumumba.) That the precise killer is arrested, and convicted, merely causes the police to rewrite their story just a little, whereas nonetheless specializing in Amanda and Raffaele. The press runs leaks and accusations from the authorities; and a fascinated public eats it up, spitting out opinions onto social media.
Director Michael Uppendahl employs a wide range of kinds to get the story informed. Some scenes are so pure as to look improvised; others make use of heavy ways — an assaultive sound design, flash cuts — to evoke the strain Amanda is beneath, from each the self-satisfied authorities and a hectoring press. (Paparazzi is an Italian phrase, in any case.) Stirring music underlies her last assertion to the court docket; a letter despatched by Amanda to Mignini is lit from inside, like the lethal glass of milk in Hitchcock’s “Infamous.” Whereas not inappropriate to a narrative by which fictions swamp information, these zigs and zags can pull you out of the story relatively than drawing you deeper in.
As Amanda, Van Patten (of the Van Patten performing/directing dynasty — Dick, Joyce, Tim, Vincent, with Grace’s sister Anna taking part in Amanda’s youthful sister) is kind of outstanding, switching between English and an ever-improving Italian. Acquaroli, quietly astonishing, brings humanity and the merest contact of weary humor to his cussed policeman. Sharon Horgan performs Amanda’s intense, demanding mom, with John Hoogenakker as her extra subdued father. In a scene pulled straight from the “Amanda Knox” documentary, a reporter asks him when there’ll be a movie: “The longer you wait the much less her story goes to be price.” “We don’t consider our daughter as a scorching property,” he replies.
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