To say that Jim Sheridan and David Merriman’s uneasy engagement with the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier, in 1996, is inspired by 12 Angry Men is to understate the case. The film is essentially a reimagining of that Sidney Lumet classic with the late Ian Bailey, found guilty in absentia by French authorities, replacing the accused “slum kid” in the 1957 original.
We begin with Aidan Gillen’s prosecuting barrister outlining the apparently watertight case against Bailey (a silently fuming Colm Meaney) before we cut to the jury room, where all but one votes to convict.
Lest you miss the parallels, the dissenting Vicky Krieps, like Henry Fonda in 12 Angry Men, is listed as merely “Juror 8”. She just “has this feeling”. As the film progresses, more and more fellow jurors – most dramatically, Sheridan’s own foreman – come around to sharing that feeling.
What we have is what might have happened if Bailey, a sometime journalist, had faced formal trial and, as the film’s promotional material has it, “the entire body of evidence [had] been made accessible”. Space precludes even a cursory summary of what is known about the murder in west Co Cork and what is disputed in this strange film, but nobody can doubt the diligence that Sheridan, who has already made a documentary series on the case, brings to his researches. There is, frankly, too much information here to be comfortably digested in such a hasty running time.
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The directors elicit decent performances and, in the later stages, inveigle spooky atmospherics into mounting revelations. But there is forever a sense of a thumb being placed on the scales. Merriman has argued that “the myths around the case ... have left one person wrongly accused [and] a killer on the loose for the last 28 years”.
[ Ian Bailey obituary: Suspect in one of the country’s most notorious murdersOpens in new window ]
The characterisation alone confirms the film-makers’ position. Krieps, juror for the defence, is articulate, reasonable and open-minded. John Connors, good as the chief pro-prosecution juror, is belligerent, bigoted and impatient. Sheridan’s foreman begins as a wavering neutral before dramatically transforming into a near-evangelistic advocate for a not-guilty verdict.
The didactic purpose ends up eating the drama alive. There is a sense of being pressed into a corner and subjected to a lecture. An interesting oddity. Little more than that.
In cinemas from Friday, October 3rd
