Summary
As far as crime documentaries go, The Women and the Murderer is chilling and may need to be watched in the presence of other people.
This review of the Netflix documentary The Women and the Murderer does not contain any spoilers.
The Women and the Murderer has a slightly different approach from Netflix’s normal releases of documentaries. Scrap that. It’s completely different from any other documentary on Netflix. And it’s different in a good way.
This documentary that totals just over 90 minutes in runtime tells the true story of serial killer Guy Georges. In case you don’t know, Guy Georges is one of France’s most famous serial killers. As a result, he is better known as The Beast of the Bastille as he murdered seven women in the Paris neighborhood of Bastille.
But what makes The Women and the Murderer watchable is its focus on the women in the case: the police chief, Martine Monteil, one of the victim’s mothers, Anne Gautier, and a journalist called Patricia Tourancheau. The women talk the viewers through the lead-up of the crime, the crimes happening, and the aftermath of Guy Georges’s arrest.
One part of the documentary that is very interesting is how the tragic deaths of Princess Diana Princess of Wales, Dodi Fayed, and Henri Paul, brought increased pressure for the investigating team. Martine Monteil was already up against it. She was working in what was believed to be a man’s job. Even though she was the first woman appointed to the best criminal investigation unit in France, you can already imagine the obstacles she had to overcome in the workplace.
As The Women and the Murderer is French, you have a few options in regards to viewing it. You could watch it in its native French language with English subtitles or watch it dubbed in English. Personally, I chose the native language with English subtitles. It keeps within the tone and vibe of the documentary and helps give a true understanding of the raw emotion shown throughout.
Guy Georges is without a doubt an extremely dangerous man; many even considering him to be a “narcissistic psychopath”. It’s scary to think what the women of Paris in the 1990s must have felt whilst Guy Georges was murdering women. I’m not a woman nor have I lived in Paris, but watching The Women and the Murderer gave me chills. So, as a whole, it’s worth a watch and may rank highly in the ranks of crime documentaries.
