A murder mystery with more than a twist: ‘Sacha’
(Radio Télévision Suisse, 2021)
“Sacha” is a 2021 six-part drama crime series, set mainly in Geneva, offering viewers a murder mystery with several epistemological twists. First, the victim doesn’t die, though he is in a coma, a condition from which viewers may well hope he never recovers. Second, we know the would-be murderer from the first scene, a public prosecutor, Anne Dupraz, who immediately goes to the police and confesses. Job done. But not quite.
“Sacha” is also a ghost story, though like the murder victim, the ghosts are very much alive. Anne is soon visited by her teenaged self and young-adult self, who nags her adult self to let the full story come out, the story of Sacha, Anne – or is it Nanette – as her parents call her? As elements of her history emerge, Anne is visited by an even younger self, a character who speaks not a word. The three versions of self sit together in the interrogations, in the jail cell, in houses and apartments, as the present-day Anne finds ways to give voice to events of the past. Are these repressed memories or ones she knows full well but just refuses to accept?
The narrative flows in short bursts through four time periods, the present, the near past, a time thirty years back, and then another dozen in the past. Viewers live iteratively, vicariously, emotionally, Anne’s life story, the near parallels facing Anne’s daughter and niece in the present time, and Anne’s piecemeal development of causal links to others, comes toward the end, to articulate.
This is an enactment of psychiatric therapy, with the viewer as psychiatrist, asking the patient unspoken questions, listening to the fractured answers, gradually piecing together a life story that also follows the script, we are led to believe, of academic research into child abuse, prostitution, and the possibility of redemption through acceptance of truth.
It’s worth the time you’ll spend viewing its six hour-long episodes.