Laeticia - General Discussion

[aghst]

HBO grabbed the rights to this French true crime series, only 6 episodes, in early August.

https://www.hbo.com/video/laetitia/videos/trailer

Premiers Monday, 8/30/21.

 

HBO has been running European-produced shows on Mondays, including His Dark Materials and Industry — I think they may also have run My Brilliant Friend on Mondays as well.

Gonna check it out, though not especially into true crime genre.

[aghst]

Finally got to watching this.

Different from any shows I've seen in awhile.  Kind of like The Missing except the person they're searching for isn't a child but a young woman.

It's not clear whose POV is represented.  First, Laeticia is shown coming home late at night on her scooter and someone asks her where she's been, does she know how late it is, etc.

Then a few months later, her twin sister Jessica discovers Laeticia's scooter on the ground outside the home where they lived.

Eventually the police are called in and increasingly, they're the focus as they interview a lot of witnesses who saw her during the day before her disappearance.

The police characters are very low-key, professional.  You don't see their back stories or their personal lives.  Or how they banter with each other.  At least not on this introductory episode.

All the witnesses give just parts of the story of how Laeticia spent her last day before her disappearance, as if they all had different pieces of the puzzle.  They eventually establish that she was spending time with some older man and that she left work late, breaking her usual habit, to meet up with this guy.

In the mean time, the police find letters that Laeticia had written about leaving their foster home and mentioned dying.  The main detective asks Jessica what Laeticia might have meant.  Then they show flashbacks to when they were toddlers and then when they were about 4 years old.  They had a monster for a father, who threatened to throw one of them off a balcony because he couldn't tolerate their crying.  Then he forces his way into the apartment that they lived in with their mother, proceeds to brutally rape her, beat her up.  The girls hear it happening in the other room.  Well one of them does while the other seems to be sleeping.

 

The police apprehend Tony Meilhon and find blood stains in the boot of his car.  He confesses that they hung out, had sex and then she left but he chased her and accidentally bumped into her scooter.  Then he put her in the trunk of his car, got home, panicked and threw her off the bridge.

So in this single episode, a mystery is presented and the police get a confession.  But the detective thinks most of the confession is a lie, other than Laeticia is likely dead.

 

In the previews they apparently don't find the body so it seems they will sketch out more back story, as the intro credit sequence shows several young girls playing Laeticia and Jessica at different ages.

 

[chediavolo]

Something about this makes me doze off.  
I’m getting tired of the sister, who looks like a 12 year old boy, and her puss face. Just can’t get into it for some reason but now I have to watch till the end. Are we to assume the insane acting  guy ( I know a bi polar man who he reminds me of, he can be quite scary) they arrested is not really the killer or are they leading up to why? It’s quite the comparison, how French police are depicted,( so polite, civil, testosterone tamped way back)  vs. how this would look in the US. 

Edited September 14, 2021 by chediavolo

[chediavolo]

Looks like it’s not a big seller on HBO! 😄 

I’m only watching still, well I don’t know why. 🙂anyone have any comments on this series? 

[izabella]

On 9/14/2021 at 6:14 AM, chediavolo said:

Something about this makes me doze off.  
I’m getting tired of the sister, who looks like a 12 year old boy, and her puss face. Just can’t get into it for some reason but now I have to watch till the end. Are we to assume the insane acting  guy ( I know a bi polar man who he reminds me of, he can be quite scary) they arrested is not really the killer or are they leading up to why? It’s quite the comparison, how French police are depicted,( so polite, civil, testosterone tamped way back)  vs. how this would look in the US. 

She bugs me because she rarely says anything.  Most of her screen time is spent staring.  She never answers questions the police ask her, even though it might help. 

I think the guy in custody is the real killer.  I think they are piecing together what happened, but I can't imagine who the real killer would be if not him.  He chased after her, hit her with his car, moved her body and dumped it in that lake.   But I am agree that it seems like they are leading up to him not being the killer.  I don't know.

[aghst]

5 hours ago, chediavolo said:

Looks like it’s not a big seller on HBO! 😄 

I’m only watching still, well I don’t know why. 🙂anyone have any comments on this series? 

I have to catch up.

Not getting much coverage, only two top critics tracked in RT but both rave reviews it appears, from the NY Times and WSJ.

[aghst]

OK watched the second episode.

I can't believe they gave custody of the girls to their psycho father after he got out of prison for beating and raping their mother while they were in the same apartment.

The mother was wrecked, couldn't take care of them.  So they hand the girls to the one who caused them trauma?

I guess that's why they are going to cover so much of their childhood, because the father is still around long after they've gone to live with the foster parents, who may also have caused some of Laetitia's unhappiness.

They seem to be headed for how her messed up upbringing made her unhappy -- she was cutting herself -- and more vulnerable to a predator like Meilhon.

 

They're starting to fill in the personality of Touchais, the main investigator who vows that he will be 24/7 on the site, even though he has a wife and two young children.

[izabella]

4 hours ago, aghst said:

I can't believe they gave custody of the girls to their psycho father after he got out of prison for beating and raping their mother while they were in the same apartment.

The mother was wrecked, couldn't take care of them.  So they hand the girls to the one who caused them trauma?

That was mind-boggling and horrifying.  I was sitting with my mouth open.

[aghst]

Episode 3.  Franck the psycho father is pissed that the foster parents got to meet with France president Sarkozy, including a visit to Paris.

He can't believe that a convicted rapist like himself can't be seen publicly with the president!

His daughter is missing, likely killed, but he's angry that he's not getting all the media attention and sympathy.  This piece of shit was also hitting the girls when they were like 8 years old, which led to them being taken from him and put in the foster home.  Yet he's complaining years later how they were taken from him and pointing out that Laetitia still ended up being murdered.

 

What a rough upbringing for Meilhon but it turns out he has a history of brutalizing women.  So they see him in a parking log surveillance video around the time of Laetitia's disappearance, where Meilhon tries to rope someone else into helping him get rid of the body, which he's already cut up into pieces!

So not a lot of mystery left about what happened, other than trying to recover all of Laetitia's remains, but looks like in the remaining episodes they will expand upon the back story, more horrific scenes to come.

[aghst]

Well after episode 5, it's clear why Laetitia was upset and afraid after being confronted by Gilles, the foster parent, for coming home late.

Obviously explains why she wanted to get the hell out of that home, though she may ever have found out about Gilles and Jessica.

So why didn't the twins report Patron and back up Lola's accusation?

Doesn't quite explain why Laetitia went off with Meilon, who didn't exactly hide what he wanted.  She had just slept with her boyfriend but decides to go off with an older, creepier guy?

 

The girls just got dealt bad set of cards, starting with their miserable father.  They wouldn't cut off Franck from their lives, even though they must now understand what he did to their mother.

Did what they witnessed what their father did to their mother make them both more likely victims?  Well Laetitia was going to report Meilon, though telling him that probably wasn't a good move.

[chediavolo]

On 9/28/2021 at 12:21 AM, aghst said:

Well after episode 5, it's clear why Laetitia was upset and afraid after being confronted by Gilles, the foster parent, for coming home late.

Obviously explains why she wanted to get the hell out of that home, though she may ever have found out about Gilles and Jessica.

So why didn't the twins report Patron and back up Lola's accusation?

Doesn't quite explain why Laetitia went off with Meilon, who didn't exactly hide what he wanted.  She had just slept with her boyfriend but decides to go off with an older, creepier guy?

 

The girls just got dealt bad set of cards, starting with their miserable father.  They wouldn't cut off Franck from their lives, even though they must now understand what he did to their mother.

Did what they witnessed what their father did to their mother make them both more likely victims?  Well Laetitia was going to report Meilon, though telling him that probably wasn't a good move.

This is where people are failed, miserably. Lack of mental health counseling.  It should be standard for foster children. Instead too many countries would rather spend money on making the powerful richer. For example, on military contracts. Don’t know what France’s excuse is. 

[Xantar]

I've been watching this mostly because I want to improve my French (I can only understand half of what people are saying, so I still have a way to go!).

I found myself wondering about the differences between the French social system and the American one. It's well-known that France has a more extensive social safety net than the United States. I don't know what the foster system is like, though. As others have said, it was shocking to me that the girls were given back to their father after he was released from prison for beating and raping their mother. I really wonder what French audiences thought of that. It frankly makes Madame Prieur (the social worker) look incompetent, especially since even after the father loses custody, he's still allowed to keep meeting and re-traumatizing them. But maybe that's because of her overburdened case load?

I happen to know one particular detail about the real Laëtitia Perrais which hasn't been shown in this series yet, so I guess that's coming in Episode 6. I'll be interested to see how the script deals with it. Up until now, the series has mostly avoided having characters stand up and say, "This is why it happened and this is the psychology of the people involved." It's left to the audience to come to their own conclusions. We'll see if that remains true in this case.

[aghst]

Well they wrap it up with Jessica's ordeal.

I guess her experience is suppose to hint at why Laetitia was depressed and reckless at the end, going from one abusive father to another abusive parental figure.

Jessica was so afraid of taking agency.  When she finally confronted her father, telling him that she heard him brutalizing her mother and that she never wanted to see him again, it was odd, she was freeing herself from one abuser but not the other.

She was willing to let Patron has his way with her, as long as she could feel a part of their family.

Even when they rejected her request to adopt her or take her to Tahiti with them, she couldn't turn in Patron.

Fortunately the other girls forced the issue.

Another horrific aspect of the French system, she was forced to testify with him sitting right next to her?  Must have been a legal proceeding and they have a similar principle as the American system where the accused have a right to face their accuser?

Jessica is 19 so she's no longer a minor but you could see how difficult it was for her to get the words out.

Overall they start with a murder and just expanded it to the victim's life until the fateful day that she was murdered.  Not so much a mystery but an exploration of how she may have become a victim.  Some people might consider it a bit of victim-blaming.

There is a case in the UK where a woman was raped and murdered by a London policeman, who tried to burn her body to hide the evidence.  He pulled her over and just abducted her.  It's highly unlikely that her life or what she went through somehow led to her being killed.  It was random and she was killed by a stranger, whereas a lot or maybe most murderers involve murderers and victims who knew each other.

In the case of Laetitia, the girls had the misfortune of being born to a horrible father and then the system failed them, first putting them with the rapist father and then finally placing them in a foster home with a predator.

Kind of a bleak view not just of the system for children's welfare but of life in general.

Before watching this episode, I re-watched the pilot for Curb Your Enthusiasm, which really lifted my mood.  Going to watch more CYE.

[I Want My MBTV]

This was so depressing.   I know the American justice system generally goes too far in the other direction but I couldn't believe that Meilon was allowed to keep getting back on the street time and time again and it looks like after this he could potentially be out in 22 years?!  Then Patron gets a whole 8 years for raping 4 (that we know of I'm sure there were more).  And of course the bio-father getting the girls when he first got out of prison (after what 1 year?) for raping and nearly murdering their mother.  I'm certainly not saying all men are monsters but the ones that are and that live in France I'm sure aren't afraid at all to commit any heinous crimes against woman since you apparently get about the same punishment as stealing a loaf of bread.  My mind boggles.    I didn't know of this case before watching this. Does anyone know if anything has changed as far as how sex offenders are handled?  

It was nice but also heartbreaking seeing the twins so happy at the end when they were with all their friends and Laeticia was doing karaoke.  

Those poor girls were just failed at every level by every adult they ever encountered.