Genealogies of a Crime

“Is she the murderer, the victim, or both?”

A French-Portuguese production from 1997, Raúl Ruiz's film opens on a murder trial where a young man named René (Melvil Poupaud) stands accused of killing his aunt, a psychiatrist who had taken him in to study his possible homicidal tendencies. Jeanne (Catherine Deneuve), the attorney defending him, takes up the case. Ruiz puts the two of them across a table from each other, and what passes between lawyer and client matters more than the verdict.