MOMMY DEAD AND DEAREST
US, 2017, 82 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Erin Lee Carr.
This is a very strong documentary, a close-up on a murder, the perpetrator, the background. However, there is quite a change of tone as the audience follows the case, the victim, the murderer, extraordinary situations.
This is the kind of documentary made by HBO and other documentary makers during the 2010s, close-ups of crime, interviews with perpetrators, with close witnesses, with journalists, with lawyers, prosecutors and offenders. This film was 18 months in the making, focusing on events within a year and more of the murder.
The audience initially sees the accused, Gypsy Rose Blanchard, a feeble looking young woman, younger than her age, seemingly unable to walk. And then she walks, to the surprise of many people, including her close friends and her father and stepmother.
The background of the story is teenagers marrying in Louisiana because the girl was pregnant. She then takes possession of her little child, seemingly precocious at first with footage of her at age 1, but then is emerging that she had quite a number of physical disabilities, from asthma and epilepsy to all kinds of ailments including paralysis from the waist down. She is Gypsy Rose Blanchard. Her mother is DeeDee Blanchard.
It emerges that the mother was perpetrating a fraud, getting all kinds of benefits, fruit of donations, visits to Disney World… Later opinions state that this is a case of Munchausen, a parent virtually imprisoning their child.
Gypsy went online and teamed up with the young man, Nick, and together they planned the stabbing of DeeDee. The young man did the stabbing, Gypsy in the next room, the two of them texting in preparation and afterwards. The film does not focus on the young man, shows him being interrogated, indicates multiple personality disorder, and was found guilty with a long sentence.
This film however, opens up the life of Gypsy, who proved to be quite intelligent, able to reflect on her life and her mother, especially during a lengthy interview with a sympathetic journalist. Quite an amount of time is given to her father and stepmother, interviews, in court, and the final sequence where they visit her in prison. There are also interviews with DeeDee’s father and stepmother, not very sympathetic towards their daughter. There is also a cousin who is very unsympathetic towards her.
What happens in this film is the audience understands better the strange situation, the influence of mother and daughter, strange characteristics of the mother over the years, the reaction of Gypsy (remembering that she was strongly medicated all the time), a plea made for second-degree murder and her sentence of 10 years which she accepts.
On reflection, it is surprising how Americans do this kind of documentary, interviewing the suspect, lawyers, the family.
