 perfect. It means in French, a perfect mother. And it's a four episode series on Netflix. And George Kason and I are going to review it today here on Sync Tech, the movie show. Welcome, George. I like French movies, you know, it helps me remember my French for one thing. And this is a movie where of course, they speak very quickly, so you have to work at it. On the other hand, it's very French. And what is what puts you off is the fact that it's an American story. It was an, I guess it was a CBS program in 1997, played in this country. And then I guess Netflix, well, Netflix took it as of only a few days ago. But it was made, I think, in 2021. And it's all the actors of French and it happens all in France in Paris. And so it's really interesting to find out that it's American story. So George, what was the story? And this is a hard question because, you know, through those four episodes, a lot of twists and turns, a lot of who done it, possibilities arise. And by the time you ultimately find out who did it, your head is spinning. Don't tell us right away who did it. The series starts with this young woman in her early 20s, right? Walking down the street, frantic with her cell phone, hysterical, sort of partially hysterical. And she's walking out of on the street. And then they have a little thing yet of her, you know, bar, you know, dancing bar, right? She's dancing with this young guy, right? And she's sort of coming on to him, you know, showing him her different parts, you know. So, and then, you know, basically, she calls her mother, right? And her mother's in another city. She's the mother's in Berlin, but she's a French woman initially. And the daughter's in Paris, right? She calls her mother and tells her mother what's going on that that the police are looking for her to, you know, because there was a murder, you know. So, so bottom line is her mother hops a plane, not with the father, just by herself. And she hops a plane and goes to Paris to try to help the daughter and work this whole thing out, right? And she she gets there and she looks up one of her old boyfriends before she just left Paris abruptly 25 years before, right? And he's he was a policeman, but now he's an attorney, right? So she sort of starts a friendship with him. She tries to renew the friendship that he didn't understand why she just abruptly left him and the relationship in Paris and moved to left town, you know, he never knew what happened. But it seemed that the perfect mother had problems with her mother, right? And that's why she left town, right? Okay, we're after that. So the perfect mother reminds me of that. The girl from Oslo, that was another mother, you know, this was a mother thing, right? This is her daughter, she's protecting her daughter. So she gets there and little by little, the pieces start to fall apart. Something is fishy. I can tell you, the mother goes to the dorm room, where her daughter is supposed to be. And the door, the daughter is not there. And she's the daughter has sublet her unit to to this other African American student, African student. So bottom line is the daughter is not living there. So the mother tries to figure out what's going on. And she's able to figure out that at a certain point, that the daughter is living at this place where they care for women that have been attacked, you know, from men and rape and stuff. So let's leave it at that. And then little by little, as the series continues, right, four different segments, right? The pieces start to fall into place. And it's a real who done it. And at the end, there is a shocker. But we'll just leave it at that. I'll let you segue it to where you want to be, Jay. We'll take it from you. Well, all these characters are circling the issue about whether the daughter did it. And you never really feel that you know what's going on here. In fact, my own, my own reaction to it is I became less and less confident that I knew what was going on as the movie as the series proceeded. By the end, I was completely confused on what was going on. So it starts out with the daughter's rendition of it was that somebody she she was in a bar with a guy by the name of Damian. And he and he was killed. In his home, she says, by an intruder of some kind. And the police who are pretty crisp in this thing, they're suspicious, they couldn't find any evidence of an intruder. And so she's trying to fabric she and her mother are trying to fabricate evidence that there was an intruder. And so you have only people working on their own agendas, trying to somehow exculpate the daughter from responsibility. I let me let me back off for a minute and say the the the actors are very good. They're very French. There's some wonderful Paris scenery, both indoor and outdoor. And there's some great dialogue, although you unless you speak French, you don't you don't get it. You have to look at the subtitles. At the end of the movie, the last minute, you find out what what was going on. And it appears there was an intruder. And he was the daughter's boyfriend. And she was what protecting him and her from Damian. And she's the one who stabbed Damian and killed him. You got to hand her you know, some credit in within the plot for having resisted all the investigation and lying to everybody about what happened. No wonder she was upset walking down the street. She was the culprit herself. You don't you don't figure that out until the last minute. In fact, it gets worse. There's kind of a postscript. Let's see what happens. At the end, you find out the very end, you find out that he got the money. And he he he went off with his family because he was married. The intruder was married. She invited him in. She's the one who created this whole scenario. He winds up with the money. And she doesn't even know that he's married. I mean, she was completely cuckolded by what happened. It is it is such an odd ending. Did you ever suspect that would happen, George? Oh, I never suspected that she would she would be the one who did it. And that and the intruder was a lover. Right. The one thing that police, they said that they could not find anybody entering that building, right, where she lived, right? Where he lived with David's building from the front. But then you find out that she had contacted this Kamal, her lover from Libya, right? And she had told him there's a way to get in from the roof. You know, you can get in from the next building. How, you know, when you think about that, this whole thing was planned. She had planned this, you know, premeditated this whole thing. And then they find out at the end that she premeditated this whole thing because she knew that Damien had attacked women, you know, wanted to rape women aggressively, right? And and and that she was working at that place for women that had been attacked, right? And and that she had planned this thing to get him in a situation where she could, you know, make trouble for him, right? But Damien, right? And then ask for money, right? So she thought this whole thing up. I mean, she's got a pretty sharp mind as a criminal, criminal mind there, you know, so and then you see pictures of the intruder, they find that they can see the intruder. And it's got this black hat on, right? And you don't know who he is until near the end, you start to see, my God, this is the guy she's in love with. And then the police are looking for Kamal, right? And she wants to meet him in a park, right? So she blows his cover, right? And then but the thing is the police are chasing him, right? They find that they're chasing him, right? And he's so petrified, a young guy, right? He's so petrified that he jumps out or a dead top of bridge, right? And then they're telling him, you know, don't don't jump, don't jump. So he commits suicide. So she this is what she created. And then the attorney, you know, her former boyfriend lover for 25 years mother mother's lover, the mother's former mother's lover, excuse me, others love I'm sorry. Yeah. He covers for the daughter, knowing exactly what the whole situation is, you know, attorneys could be dishonest to to get their client off. So she gets off from all these evil things she did. And the mother takes her back to Berlin, you know, but really not justice serve the this Kamal, he shouldn't have been, you know, playing around with this other woman is married, right? And she did all these horrible things and she gets off scot free. Not the first time, you know, and her father, her father in Berlin is a physician. And he's got some, Faridah, he's got some Arab Islamic patient who's dying. So he's concerned with that. That's why he didn't go initially to Paris. And then there's she's got a young Anya, who is the perpetrator, she's got a younger brother, Lucas, who is totally upset by all this. So he, he cuts out of his exams, which is important for him to get into college. So the plot twists and turns, but as you said, I didn't have a clue that this Anya was the perpetrator and it was totally premeditated. And the other thing is Damien, his mother is an extremely wealthy cosmetics CEO, right? So she's got a lot of money. And she's she wants Anya fried, right? Because, you know, this is what she only has a son and her daughter, right? And you know, when a lot of families, the son is put on a pedestal and the daughter and Damien had a sister and the mother never treated the sister the same as Damien. Damien was her prize, you know, and she never thought Damien could do any wrong. So there's a lot of twists and turns in this plot. It shows the power of Bunny, which I well know is really makes me angry, you know, but she's able to pull, pull a lot of strings. But she's she's felt we'll still see rich woman, right? So really interesting series. And as you said, you don't know until the end what the real service is. You see everybody play out their theory of the case. They all have a different theory of the case, including the perfect mother. And, and, you know, Anya is making them all dance when in fact she is the perpetrator. And, and so, you know, each one moves into the they move it's like a circus, they move into the center ring. They try this theory of the case. Doesn't work. Somebody else moves in and you're as the viewer, you're dancing around all these theories because you never come to rest until the very end. It's sort of a ploy on the viewer. Because because of the way it's set up. And you know, when they say a perfect mother, they're talking about the last scene more than any other scene, where she she finds out that her daughter is the perpetrator. Finally, she was protecting her all through the four series. And now she finds out, but she makes a choice to protect her and never reveal what happened and that our daughter was the murderer. And the lawyer who was injured, you know, use a cane. He's walking away from her. This is really a very interesting scene. He's walking away. He knows that she knows the two of them are the only ones who know. And he joins in her silence. He joins in her conspiracy. But he's really ticked off. She has the mother and male Parfait has disappointed him. And he leaves and to the extent that he was infatuated with her that disappears at the end. I think it you know, it is it does circle around this notion of a perfect mother. And what it means that she was willing to break every rule. She was willing to lie and cheat and go to tremendous, you know, extremes to protect her daughter, even when she had hard copy. Before she had hard copy. And even when she had hard copy that her daughter was in fact the guilty culprit. I think this French movie, this French series was actually better than the American back in 1997. It was really well done. And it played with you. I mean, if you take that as a measurement of how well done a movie is where you never you never really find out until the last part of it. And the other thing is, I felt that the the idea was based on a true story, you know, back in 1997, when CBS originally did that, it was faithful to a true story about a real murder at a real daughter and a real mother. And they were making kind of I guess it was a documentary or a modified documentary, a docu drama of that story. And this is taken off that. I don't know whether this is more accurate in terms of the original events, or or not. But one thing is clear also is that it ends dull thought. It ends where everything is revealed. Now you know exactly what happened. You know, who was good, who was bad, what they did, all the mysteries are are explained and resolved for you. And I and I think that's very interesting, because people write on the web, they say, When will we have season two? I'm waiting around for season two. And they shouldn't have written that question, because season one ends so completely. And tell me, nay, it's done. It's done. But yet all these people are asking for a season two. I guess they really liked it. But the response that you get on the web is kidding me? How could you possibly have a season two when everything is revealed? There's no hook, you know, and that I guess that's part of this whole thing with these series is you have to leave a hook in order to make a season two or three or four, whatever it might be. This was just a long call it a docu drama. And then it tells you everything that there is to tell. And I think a lot of a lot of series that you see whether the docu dramas or not, leave something, you know, unspoken, unrevealed, and a way to get back into it away for them to make another season. So George, you know, what, what did you think of this in terms of, you know, the movies that you and I have looked at, the movies that have, you know, that we have enjoyed that we have reviewed over the past year. Where does this fit? We haven't done, we haven't done one like this, right? This is the first time we did a series who'd done it. How do you feel about that as opposed to the others? First, I'll get into the whole thing about the hook, right? With the Kaminsky method, which was a series, there was always a usually some kind of a hook to the next one, right? Even though there was that gap with Alan Alder's part, you know, where it didn't show his sickness, it just showed the next did, but there was a hook. And then when we had Art of the Crime, you know, there was that that was also French, right? And that also had to do, there was sort of like questions there of, you know, what exactly inspired it. But this one, it leaves you sort of, like you said, sort of a son, because you never think that that young, you know, dumbness, you know, and it was all premeditated. And what bothered me like it bothered you and the, you know, the attorney, her form, the mother's former lover boyfriend, 25, he was pursuing the Kamal thread, right? And he went into these drug dealer area, and they threw him off of fourth floor and he almost died. He fell on top of a roof of a car, right? And he broke his hip, and he broke some ribs. So he had really been very close to dying, you know, and he did all of this for his former girlfriend, right? And then at the end, all that was turned for naught because it was the daughter that had really done the murder. And yet he did still, he still didn't, didn't open his mouth, just let it happen, right? Because he still had feelings, I guess, for the mother, but it shows that, to me, there's something wrong with this, when a, when a murderer could get away with it, you know, so and looking back to the other ones that we did, like, the part of the crime, the kind of thing, what else was similar to this thing? Now, in terms of the perfect mother, there was the girl from Oslo, right, where that was the perfect mother, and she saved her daughter. But her daughter had done any, they hadn't done anything wrong. And as well, the youngest Billy Bowman had her throat cut, which really bothered me. I didn't want to see that. Brothers survived, you know, it was like Pearl, what was his name, but they still wrote the jihadist. So, but bottom line is, this is sort of a different ending, you know, it's not really, it's an ending that leaves a hole in your heart, that this woman got away with this man. And the mother is a perfect, I don't consider her the mother, the perfect mother, because she's letting her daughter get away with murder, literally, you know, so I don't that's pretty much I kind of think some of the other things we've looked at that tie into this, but I don't remember anything else. I can go back to all of them. The genocides that made it, the Ukrainians in 2014, and then underground railroad you did. And then, and then the guy, the father who was had Alzheimer's played by the guy that played animal lecture, I can't remember his name right now. You know, that was very good. Yeah. So I mean, all of these ended in a certain way. This movie ended very different. Very different. At the end, that's a thought for me. What was it? It was a fake out because you were, you were praying in the course of the series to be sympathetic to the young girl who was pretty and sweet and traumatized by what had happened. You never thought that she was a cold-blooded killer. I mean, for example, she had the rape drug. Remember that there's a certain kind of drug that that men give to women when they rape them to make them, you know, go unconscious or something. And she had that in her system. And then he found that in fact, she had a supply of it at home. She was the one who drugged herself to make it look like she'd been raped. So, you know, it was little by little, you began to see that you were, it was a fake out. It was a fake out on the viewer. And at the end, I have to say, while I appreciate that they did a good job on faking me out, I didn't really like that. I'm sorry. And it was the mother that found that rape drug in her place. Yes, yes, yes. I've said anything, you know. So, I mean, to me, perfect mother, sorry, doesn't fly with me. I would, if I had a child, I would never let my child get away with murder, you know. Well, I mean, what would you have done? What would you have done? She didn't want her daughter to go to jail. And she would have been in jail for a long time for a premeditated murder. A brutal murder. A highly publicized murder of a highly publicized victim. What would you have done? What is the lesson that she's going to give her daughter when she gets her back to Berlin? How do you know that this young woman thinks she can get away with this? How do you teach her that you can't, you can't get away with this? What, you know, the whole life, the lesson is that you can do anything you want and you can get out of it. But that's a bad lesson for the daughter, right? So how's the mother going to, we never get past the end of the movie. But how's the mother and father going to rectify? And then you get into a lot of things that the father was MD. And he was, oh yeah, neglecting his children. Very similar to the, to the movie with the late cows. Another deal where the architect, the Billy neglects, doesn't really give his children. So that's another key tie in, right? Is that the doctor was not, you know, he wasn't there for his kids, right? He was too busy with his patients and his career, right? And the perfect mother, she was trying to be so perfect, right? That she, she ended up being not perfect at all, you know, because she, you know, she didn't want to be like her own mother, right? So she pretty much, she must have given her daughter some freedom or I don't know, but, but, you know, Well, you know, it's interesting that you, that you speculate on what would happen. Well, assuming the characters were, you know, maintained the character that they showed us during those four episodes. But at the end, the perfect mother takes the daughter, Anja, back to Berlin from when she came. And you have to ask yourself, what, what happened back in Berlin? What was going to happen? And the answer is, I guess, let me throw this at you. Shoot, the perfect mother wasn't going to say anything. She was going to keep this secret deep and dark inside her forever. She was never going to tell the daughter that she knew the story and she knew the daughter was a murderer. And the father, the doctor didn't even know. So, you know, what I think what it tells you is that she was perfect, if you consider this perfection till the end, that she would not have told her not have challenged her. And the daughter would have gotten away with it and figured that not only had she fooled everyone in the in the program, she fooled her mother, too. She didn't know that her mother knew that her mother wasn't going to say anything. That's that's where it really goes in Berlin, I think. But, you know, a lot of families, I mean, my family has secrets, you know, my mother's uncle had an affair with Sinclair Orioles, opera singer wife, and they had a child that nobody, everybody denied it. And my mother's heritage is we've talked about that was never spoken of, you know, because in that difficult. So, you know, I think it's a very good point, George, that no family is perfect. And a lot of these movies that we see now, because they're more sophisticated all the time, really. And you can see that from our track on reviewing these movies, is that no family is perfect. They all have a little something, but sometimes a big something in the movie plays on that. And this certainly did that. And if you think back, there's a lot of movies that we've seen, not only the ones we've reviewed, but the ones we've seen on Netflix and Prime and wherever else, that play on this family dynamic, this family secret kind of thing. And the fact that it's never really perfect at all. So it's a misnomer to say that she was mayor perfect. She wasn't perfect. She was imperfect. So what what do you what do you give this this movie? All that considered what kind of rating on a scale of 10? Because I don't like that the conclusion, but acting great. Give it a nine and a half. The only reason I'm not giving it a 10 is because I don't like the way it ended. I don't like that she got off that young woman got off starting stuff. Acting was good, scenery was good. The interplay, the questioning, the way you like pieces, like putting together a puzzle. Perfect. So nine, nine and a half. Well, I feel that it was good to do a replay of the one in CBS in 1997. I feel that the acting was good. The characters were faithful. The script was good. It was good. It might have been better than the script back in 1997 on CBS. And I imagine that the European audience, the French audience really liked this movie. But I'm with you on the ending. I just troubled by it. But that's the story, George. That that is the story. You can't fault them. You know, it's like, it's like, it's going to love OM, the opera, and saying, I hated that I hated the plot. Come on, it's not the plot we care about. I mean, and that was the original plot of this. So on the other hand, I'm absolutely together with you on the notion that I was disappointed in the failure of the perfect mother. I felt that I had been misled by all this. I'm not sure that it could have been or was that way in the original story, or in the CBS performance back in 1997. So I give it a nine at the max, and maybe less. They really, they played with us. And I don't really like when they play with us. I would rather not have that. It's personal. It's subjective. But that's what we do here on the movie show, George. We are completely subjective, aren't we? Because you can't really, and anybody who goes into a movie theater or now with COVID, you know, you always plays into your own feelings, your own life, your own existence. You know, I personally can't separate a movie from, you know, I mean, I loved Pretty Woman. We even reviewed that. I mean, that stayed in my memory for years and years. That was my favorite movie forever, all the time. And so it plays into, you know, your feelings, you know, so I couldn't agree with you more that there's a little bit of sadness here as what the lesson that this movie projects. Hard. It was hard what it was. It was a hard view of life. Okay, so the one we are contemplating for next time is Forget Me Not. It's an English movie. And well, the movies these days are European, it seems like. And it's about an overnight love affair. And I found it very interesting. And we should not discuss what happens here, because it is a complete and total surprise. And suffice to say it is an overnight love affair that will keep you interested. Next time. Thank you, George. Always, always fun to do this. And we can never, ever keep up with these movies. But we try. Give the shot, right? Well, thanks again. Have a good day. Aloha.