In 2012, Elize Matsunaga shot her husband, Marcos Kitano Matsunaga, in the head. She then dismembered him in their apartment and carried the pieces, stored in separate suitcases, to be scattered along a rural road. The crime, one of the most divisive and notorious of Brazil’s murder cases, forms the basis for Netflix’s Elize: Shadows of a Woman, a retelling of the true story, largely from Elize’s perspective, but embellished with dramatized emotional dynamics.
It’s the second time that Netflix has taken a swing at the topic, with the four-part docuseries Elize Matsunaga: Once Upon a Crime having got there first. The depth of this fact-based offering somewhat takes away from the movie, which is largely a psychological thriller, but the compelling lead performance from Lorena Comparato adds some additional contours to Elize’s upbringing and psyche, challenging the prosecution’s claims of her being a calculated murderer out for money and playing into the enduring victimhood vs. accountability debate which made the real-life crime so arresting in the first place.
Follow the Facts
In its broad strokes, Shadows of a Woman presents a relatively fair and balanced account of the crime. After coming from a humble and abusive background in Paraná, Elize worked as an executive escort in São Paulo. In the course of her work, she met Marcos Kitano Matsunaga, the wealthy heir to a food processing empire. At the time, he was married, but he and Elize fell for one another.
Elize marrying Marcos led to rapid and profound social elevation. After a fraught period of attempting to conceive, it also led to the birth of their daughter. In a roundabout fashion, it also led to Marcos’s death. On May 19, 2012, he returned home with a pizza, got into a heated argument with Elize, and ended up being shot in the head and divided into several pieces.
Elize eventually confessed to the crime after the remains were discovered. But the details aren’t even half of it.
How the Movie Adapts the Story
As with the docuseries, the story is told across four non-linear chapters. It begins on the night of the crime and then cycles backwards, before eventually catching back up to itself. It’s a classic dramatic technique, beginning with the big hook, and then gradually contextualising it.
As is the case with a lot of true-crime stories, and this one in particular, the context is the most important thing, and the movie spends a lot of time unravelling the breakdown in Elize and Marcos’s marriage. From the hiring of a private investigator to prove infidelity, to the depiction of Marcos’s financial and psychological control, especially with threats to Elize’s custody of their daughter, a picture is painted of a less-than-happy marriage.
Since the movie unfolds from Elize’s perspective, it’s also framed in her fear and panic over the pressure that Marcos was exerting over her, undercutting the prosecution’s argument of premeditation for financial gain. However, it must also be conceded that the movie depicts Elize as a bit of a nutter, playing up her almost psychotic fondness for hunting, and a passion for snakes that is generally a red flag for most people.
The Outcome and Cultural Impact
Marcos’s murder captured the public imagination in Brazil because it had such a clear divide. On the one hand, the prosecution were arguing that Elize was a calculated killer who had offed her husband to secure his wealth (and as revenge for his infidelity). On the other, the defence argued that it was a crime of passion; a woman under extreme emotional distress, fearing for her safety and threatened with losing custody of her daughter.
The case didn’t go Elize’s way, and she was convicted of intentional homicide and destruction/concealment of a corpse. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison. However, the issues raised in the trial of class disparity and domestic abuse continued to resonate, raising questions of where the moral line resides in matters of extreme psychological victimhood. Elize was perhaps justified in defending herself, but her messy efforts to dispose of the corpse and cover up the truth speak to a deeper pathology that the movie tries – and ultimately, in my view, fails – to unpack.
Where is Elize Matsunaga Now?
Despite being sentenced to 20 years, this was reduced to 16 years in 2019. Elize served ten of those years and was released on parole in 2022. She remains free.
The Matsunaga family wishes to disassociate themselves from the crime by removing Elize’s surname.
