Un Café au Cyanure: Le Chaos de l'Affaire Wongso

Being from a legal family (American), I watched to see how it's done in Indonesia.

Now that country is off my bucket list!

The two things I took away from this documentary is: The family dictates how far a coroner can go in an autopsy. In this one, the police wanted a full autopsy, but the family didn't allow that. In this instance, they allowed only small blood samples. Nothing in depth.

Second - If you are not beautiful (and in the definition of Indonesian beauty), you are guilty - automatically in the eyes of everyone observing the trial!! Innocence is being beautiful! OMG! You can't make this stuff up!

What's unfair is that it (probably) gives a bad and unfair view of an entire country.

But back to the documentary, it's odd and long. The film clips are often the same.

If you need something to pass the time, or to iron to (Google it!), pay bills, do dishes, this is it.

I love true crime, I've seen most docs out there. This was a very hard watch - not because of a traumatic crime, but because this is a horrendously made documentary. A very interesting case, but I genuinely learnt nothing from this documentary. The actual victim, Mirna, was barely mentioned - however her intensely unlikeable father was in it waaaay too much. He was smug, arrogant and genuinely seemed to believe that he was a hero and worldwide celebrity. He forged and planted evidence, brought a gun to court and seemed to thrive on his overinflated ego. Why did they give him so much air time??

The editing of the timeline of the murder jumped around so much and the facts of the case were so poorly presented. It seems like the actual case was barely spoken about; it was all about the trial and far too much focus on random people's opinions. No background info on the victim or killer, no real interviews with witnesses of the crime, no explanation as to why cyanide was apparently proven not to be the cause of death... Why was there more information on the defence lawyer's golf course (?) name and the prosecutor's new car than a possible motive for the murder (which they all bizarrely say isn't that important) or how Jessica actually got cyanide in the first place??

The courtroom footage itself was absolutely disgusting and shocking. That's not necessarily the documentary maker's fault, but why was there such a focus and so much footage of the horrible circus of a trial..? People clapping, cheering, laughing continuously throughout was really jarring. And WHY were there so many 'experts' but they all seemed to testify as if they'd just rolled out of bed? I genuinely was shocked hearing the man present evidence of Jessica being the killer because of the shape her eyes made, and how his scientific basis came from watching movie stars. Why did the documentary not lean into that angle, about the absolute farce of the trial?

I still don't know what relevance half the interviewees really had to the story. I still don't know what the prosecution argued in order to get a conviction, or why all of sudden after the defence's expert witness was deported that the lawyer went from "we are 100% winning this" to "we knew we would lose now". What..? Because of one random 'expert'?? What was the bit about with opening the bottle in court? There'd been zero information about a bottle leading up to that, then a brief mention that the coffee was transferred to the bottle. Still no idea why it was opened in court. What was the bit about a bribe too??

I'm going to read up on the case as the tiny bit of information the documentary *did* provide was intriguing, but the documentary was a waste of time.

Also, Netflix - don't create a trailer that says "there was a rumour of a love triangle between Jessica, Mirna and her husband" and "there were alleged ties to the mafia" and then not mention it ONCE in the doc. There was like one line on Mirna and Jessica being lovers but that was never explained.

The one thing I learnt is that there are some people in the world stupid enough to take a sip of discoloured, sharp-smelling coffee that your customer just drank and is now convulsing on the ground. My jaw literally dropped at that. I need a full documentary on this woman tbh.

Why did you call such a superficial work a documentary? No conversation was had with other friends at the same table, with other girls in the same WhatsApp group, or even with the husband of the victim. Why are random passersby talking in a documentary about a cyanide coffee case? Like "we made a bet on who would win the case and I won this car from that bet." What is that, why? You shouldn't call it a documentary if you're not going to get people involved to talk. We could get more information than that on the evening news. I was curious about the other 14 cases involving Jessica (which were, of course, also omitted from the documentary), so I googled their names. There's a 60-minute documentary that provides much more information than what's covered in this Netflix production. I mean why? Why would you do a more sloppy job when you had more budget, more reputation, and more opportunities at Netflix?

Ungornately, this is a real live crime.

When I was watching it, I almost forgot that that happened for real.

It seemed to me that I was warching a B movie with a nad script and argument that nobody would believe. Unless you were a Indonesian Justice Member.

What a shame.

Everytime I see this kind of situation, I confirm the ideia that we have to much to evolve yet.

Here in Brazil we have these kind of justice as well.

The specialists that are more interested in look good in pictures than protect the truth.

Nobody cares about the other people as long as they can perform their futile show.

If you go by this, everyone in Indonesia is insanely vain and vapid. Their legal system is an absolute joke, with everyone involved believing and relying on science and arguments that would be laughed out of any other court in the world. The attention seeking father of the deceased woman was allowed to bring a gun into the court room, as well as place a doctored photo into evidence that was only at the last second discovered and removed. Every high school debate tournament I've seen has been head and shoulders above this country's highest court. Looks like there's a new entrant in the way too crowded race to see who can recreate the world from Idiocracy first.