Spoiler alert: this blog details events in the fifth episode of Witnesses, which airs on Channel 4 at 10pm. To see a recap of episode four, click here.
With so much time spent with the Gorbiers, Witnesses is, by this point, as much horror film as police thriller, even entering full-on slasher mode when that bad man in clownface was wandering around, brandishing a bloodied knife. Now I’ve stopped expecting everything to make sense, and resigned myself to a bundle of loose ends, I’m really enjoying it. I’m certainly determined not to let next week’s finale frustrate me. How about you?
The case
Kaz prepares to kill Paul, his wife and himself, but Jérémie helps Paul escape and Gorbier is captured after Sandra locates his hideout. Laura is apparently distressed by Paul’s capture, and leaves a key in the show home as a clue. The key opens the postbox of the first show home, in which lie pictures of Paul’s ex-lover and – I think – Laura’s mother, who committed suicide in 1996. Henri Norbert, meanwhile, is hauled in for the deaths of Weber, Muse, Laplace and Kremer after Sandra spots him on an ancient home video placing them all at the same tennis tournament. Gorbier (who, incidentally, is far scarier when he’s not losing his temper and shouting) may be in custody, but there’s still plenty to resolve next week.
The odd couple
With Justin still out for the count and Paul otherwise engaged, Sandra shouldered the case herself tonight (no thanks to the useless Maxine – although the way she was mooning over the photo of Paul made me wonder if they’d had a fling). And, just when I was thinking Sandra’s OCD had been forgotten, it resurfaced with her, um, committed re-enactment of Gorbier’s most recent attack. Congratulations to Addicks123 for rumbling the golf club connection.
I was deeply dismayed by the outcome of Sandra and Paul’s heart-to-heart. How has she been that desperate for approval and validation from this strange man for so long? I think we can also probably rule out Paul being the father of either Chloée or the miscarried child, unless he’s a better actor that any of us ever suspected: there seemed to be neither guilt nor contrition after Sandra told him about the miscarriage.
Paul Maisonneuve
This series now looks to be about the redemption of Paul Maisonneuve, rather than anything much to do with Sandra. All the strands of the case tie to his past misdemeanours including, I feel sure, Norbert’s involvement.
I’m also fairly sure Laura knows (or thinks) she is Paul’s daughter, oblivious though he is. The line about her reminding him of someone he loved came back to me at the end of the episode, when he talked about “the first woman I ever loved.”
Why was Gorbier so desperate for Paul to watch him dancing with his wife Jane (in what looked liked her wedding dress)? I wondered if we were meant to infer that Jane and Paul had a fling in the past – I wouldn’t put it past the dirty dog – and even that Jérémie might have been the result. A dalliance too far, surely.
Other key players
Laura: Complètement fou, it seems (the doll’s house, the crack-up prompted by Paul’s disappearance), but driven so by the suicide of her mother. And who is her accomplice? It was very dark and the contrast on my TV is terrible, but we definitely got a glimpse and the voice sounded young. It certainly wasn’t Jérémie Gorbier, who was locked in with his mad dad. Was it Paul’s son, Thomas? If so, this would tally either with the idea that Laura is in fact Paul’s daughter, or that both of them hold him ultimately responsible for the deaths of their mothers.
Which begs the question: what does she want from Paul? An apology? Love? Recognition? His demise? I suspect her fury was more because someone had got to him first rather than genuine concern for his safety, but I could be wrong.
I loved the Laura poster on her wall, by the way. Witnesses now feels absolutely of a piece with that film’s delirious, noirish toying with identity, obsession and mistakes that can’t be rectified.
Henri Norbert: Finally, what we’ve all suspected for some time, and what Addicks123 (again!) put together last week: Norbert has been bumping off his blackmailers, the Roland Garros Four. But why? The police talked about him having murdered someone, hence the blackmail, but do we know this for sure? I mourn the fact that we still know so little about his character at this late stage. He still comes across as a mildly rude non-entity at the moment. I’d have liked to feel more of a sense of vindication or triumph about his detention.
Damien: Looking like Norbert’s stooge. He certainly seemed agitated by his boss’s arrest, and that parting shot to Paul was very strange. “You want the firm to fold so people will leave Le Tréport like you did.” Why would Paul want to do that to a friend?
Time of the Wolf
Lupine references largely absent this week, although I felt a slight sense of anticlimax as the wolf padded off-screen. Where is the poor thing being kept? Even so, Marie Dompnier did an absolutely bang-up job of looking utterly terrified.
Thoughts and observations
- Le Tréport tourist board alternative slogan of the week: “Le Tréport – where every family’s an unhappy one.”
- At the start, when Paul was on the mattress, who did he spot wrapped up in plastic? Was it the policemen Gorbier killed while abducting his family?
- I’m all for atmosphere, but some of the lighting in this episode was so gloomy that it was genuinely hard to see what was going on.
- Kaz likes his murder victims to be clean (and clean-shaven – I shuddered at the intimacy of that scene) before he does the deed. Once a dentist, always a dentist.
- What song was Gorbier humming while he danced with his wife? Or, for that matter, the song playing while Kaz lay on the bed with her?
- Sandra’s desperate hunt on the golf course was nicely handled. I thought the soundtrack came into its own in this sequence.
- The interlude when Sandra visited Justin’s house (I think?) and retrieved the paperbacks was odd, and felt significant. He wasn’t exactly houseproud, by the looks of it.
- Why did Laura introduce herself to Sandra? I’m not sure what she had to gain, given that Sandra was unlikely to give up many details about Paul.
- Is Gorbier ultimately just a vengeful rent-a-psycho – Asking his son, “are you afraid of me? Why?” displayed a lamentable lack of self-awareness – or are his motives a little more complex?
- “I have you by the balls. They were hard to find.” Was I the only one to punch the air at this point?
