TV review: Elize Matsunaga: Once Upon A Crime, Netflix (2021)

This brilliant slow-moving Brazilian docuseries chronicles the life of a young woman from a home with modest circumstances who marries into the family of a rich manufacturer in Sao Paolo. Elize Matsunaga is charged with shooting her husband and chopping him up then disposing of the body parts. All this is already known. 

What comes out in the show is the circumstances that drove Elize to kill Marcos Matsunaga, a young man from a prominent food manufacturing dynasty who loved hunting and had a predilection for call girls. It was on a website for escorts that Marcos first met Elize but even after the were married and had a child he kept going back for new experiences.

What comes out in the progress of the scandal is how much it affected the country. Issues such as economic disadvantage and domestic violence were discussed in relation to the lives of Elize and Marcos publicly in the newspapers. When the trial finally happened in 2016 there was even more general interest in events.

Like I said this one moves slowly but in the end I was absolutely drawn to the details of the case. What happened between Elize and Marcos became like something happening in my favourite soap opera. Watching the detectives or lawyers or family friends or relatives discuss Marcos’ philandering or Elize’s brutality was like watching Ridge and Steffy on ‘The Bold and the Beautiful’ discuss Shiela.

I see no problem with this type of vicarious prurient enjoyment of other people’s misfortunes, it seems perfectly natural to gossip and to explore parts of our own personalities in the process. Watch this series if you haven’t already, it’s my recommendation for the month of November. It’s subtitled but not very perfectly but it’s not hard to understand, the problem being that while they translate the words the people say they don’t always translate the strap lines describing who people on the screen are. This is a little bit of a bother but not hard for me as I studied French and Italian. Of course the language of the show is Portuguese.