Rosa Peral’s Tapes Review: Las Cintas De Rosa Peral is a Spanish true-crime documentary film that premiered on Netflix on September 8, 2023. Its subject matter tackles with the controversial trial of 2020 through which the eponymous Barcelonian former police agent was convicted of murdering her partner with the help of an ex-lover.
The film has a runtime of 80 minutes and has been directed by Manuel Perez and Carles Vidal Novellas, with Carlos Agullo as its showrunner. It also captures Peral giving her first interview from prison, and brings back snippets of the trial’s visual documentation.
Rosa Peral’s Tapes Netflix Documentary Review Contains No Spoilers
Rosa Peral’s Tapes Review
In addition to Rosa’s own take on the matter, which also drives our attention to a more personal outlook towards her priority being to keep her daughters safe amidst all the rising dangers and controversies against her name, the documentary brings in journalists tackling with the case back then, and even her own father. There’s a clear distinction in the way certain reporters who covered the issue in the past and her father speak against or for her. However, the most unfortunate bit of it all is that to this day, there’s no hard and fast evidence or proof against Rosa, affirming her direct and active involvement in murdering her partner.
Despite that being the major issue hindering the trial’s progress, a clear picture demonising Rosa is drawn up, which posits her in a guilty light, though not necessarily of the crime itself, but of sinning and enacting as a “seductress”. Throughout the film, the spotlight remains shining bright on her name as journalists remind us how her name was dragged through the mud, simply due to her past choices of indulging in supposed sexual relationships with numerous men outside of her commitment to her present partner at the time. Never mind what she had to say in the department because even her own police force had contributed to vilifying her name and establishing her character as an adulteress.
I found it quite interesting and hypocritical how the justice system too shed aside all concerns of logic and facts, and singularly focussed on presenting her character in a certain light. Most of the conversation around the case, as addressed by this film, wasn’t concerned with looking at the evidence at hand. And just because the lack of it didn’t make it any easier to solve it, the parties involved in doing so, media included, just chose to pin Rosa’s name down against a narrative about her that they felt convenient to draw upon.
The prosecution side, too, kept bringing up her relationships with other men, but we should understand that none of that actually amounts to reasoning or proof of her being capable of murdering someone. Rather this whole scene is spun around and reductively made to look like a “crime of passion”, which also highlights the choice of vocabulary resorted to by the media that specifically puts all the onus on Rosa’s back. It’s almost as if both the media and the prosecution are spinning a story of their own, and it only makes us question the objective power of reasoning and truth that the justice system ostensibly stands for.
It’s hard to truly speak for her involvement in the case, and while we can’t fully rule out her being the culprit either, the documentary reminds us that it’s quite common for the authorities to push female suspects into a hole like this, thereby completely assassinating their characters. Despite it being a modern case of the near past, the dialogue instantly takes us back to the old eras and time when women would singularly be viewed as promiscuous individuals if ever such situations were to arise. It also makes us question that even though we have moved past those supposedly archaic times, how far have we truly come in being open-minded, especially when such crimes involve women as suspects?
Nathaniel Hawthorne‘s The Scarlet Letter came out in the 19th century, but it seems like we’re still branding women with the letter ‘A’ of adultery in the supposedly modern and up and coming time of the 21st century. I know the contexts for both scenarios are quite different, but are they really that disparate in the way Rosa Peral and Hester Prynne’s lives simply came to be reduced down to them being defined as licentious and “sinful” women? It’s a question worth asking.
Las Cintas De Rosa Peral Netflix Documentary: Final Thoughts
The latest Netflix documentary is definitely an intriguing watch, and it will especially draw you in if you’re a hardcore true-crime enthusiast. What makes this premiere even more interesting is that it has been released by Netflix on the same date as its thriller drama mystery series Burning Body, which deals with the same subject matter, but in a more fictional and dramatised light.
Moreover, the documentary, though its centred on the more realistic side of the case, still keeps reminding us that a case like this, which hasn’t essentially served white justice to anyone, ultimately just ends up blurring the difference between the guilty parties and victims. Plus, what really stuck with me in the end is the prosecutor’s quote, “most people interpret crime through a narrative lens… It’s a narrative retelling of what has happened… Reality, though, is very different”, as it goes a long way in summing up the issues with such a case where the lack of evidence turns every confession or dialogue into a narrative that is inherently unreliable and flawed.
Rosa Peral’s Tapes is now streaming on Netflix.