On the night of November 4, 1997, Reena Virk was just a 14-year-old teenager, whose family, Jehovah’s Witnesses of Indian origin, did not fully understand the young woman’s fascination with hip hop, Jeffrey Campbell boots and much more. less The beautiful Josephine Bell, the leader of a group of girls with violent propensities. But, that same night, her anonymous existence, as a victim of harassment, ashamed of her ethnic origin, would become a symbol of the racist, dilettante and ruthless violence of Canadian society, reflected in the seven schoolmates who killed her. His story, which shocked Canadian society, brought to light the memory of the infamous murder of indigenous peoples, at a time when the Columbine High School massacre had not yet occurred and the crimes perpetrated by adolescents were not of the nature of “normal”. . ” that they have earned today.

The crime would later be recounted by journalist and writer Rebecca Godfrey, also originally from Victoria, Canada, in the book Under the bridge, from 2005, which was a bestseller at the time. The work has now taken the form of a series, through Hulu (in Portugal it can be seen on Disney+), starring actress Lily Gladstone, the first Native American to be nominated for an Oscar, and Riley Keough, granddaughter of Elvis Presley. The eight-episode series, which premiered in the United States in April, was one of the four most watched in that country between April and May. A success that is not unrelated to the fever that the “true crime” genre currently has among the younger generations, nor to the fact that racism continues to be disturbingly current.

[o trailer de “Debaixo da Ponte”:]

Under the bridge pays tribute to this non-fiction genre inaugurated in the 1960s by the journalist and writer Truman Capote, with the book Cold blood, a mix of reports, field interviews, chronicles and reflection that gave rise to the New Journalism movement. Rebecca Godfrey assumed this affiliation and the author of the series, Quinn Shephard, used the same confluence of narrative lines in the plot, where what matters is not who committed the crime or whether they will be caught, but rather revealing the psyche of a community, of the ghosts that inhabit it and how these “unspoken” feelings end up violently exploding.

Just as Capote spent six years in Holcomb, Kansas, he interviewed imprisoned criminals, the families of the dead, and the neighborhood to write Cold blood, Rebecca Godfrey returned to Saanich, the city where she herself was originally from, to tell the story of the murder of Reena Virk, facing on this trip her own adolescence, the death of her brother with a mental illness and trying to get to the truth by avoiding (and sometimes failing that) your own prejudices, beliefs, traumas. So, Under the bridgeIt is a series with several narrative layers, several times, several points of view, which means that, for all these women involved, this is not just the story of a crime, but a story of formation, of inexorable entry into adulthood, with an act that is impossible to erase.

Reena Virk and her friends, Josephine, Kelly and Dusty, who dreamed of being gangsters

For two years, Quinn Shephard worked with writer Rebecca Godfrey on the adaptation of the book and they both shared the option of combining Rebecca’s story with that of Reena Virk (which does not happen in the book of the same name), especially since Godfrey had a terminal illness. of which she passed away in 2022, when filming of the series began. Reena’s murder at the hands of her classmates (mostly girls) and the way Rebecca’s investigation helped the police uncover the criminals among a group of seemingly normal and even “cool” teenagers, are the two main narrative lines of the work, which then branch into the story of Camila, a police officer of indigenous origin, with a past also marked by the feeling of not belonging, that of the Virk family, the only one of Indian origin in that community. , and that of Reena’s three friends, who would be the main people involved in her death, Josephine, Kelly and Dusty.

At a time when emigration, racism and polarization are at an all-time high in Portuguese society, Under the bridge becomes an important object because it confronts us with the forms of racism that subtly spread among the youngest, the weakest socially and mentally, and are manifested in ways invisible to adults, within the cultural rituals of adolescents, their “rites of passage”, in their search for recognition, acceptance, but also in small everyday rivalries and jealousies.

Reena Virk, not “just” another dead girl

A dead girl, a half-naked corpse, evidence of a crime. The beginning became almost banal, when every day new series are released in streaming for an audience eager for true crime and the dead girl thing became normal. However, few manage to resonate, not only with someone’s criminal instincts, but with an entire community. Easttown Mare, from 2021, with a magnificent Kate Winslet, will perhaps be the highlight of this genre and, next to it, all the series about teenagers who commit crimes can seem quite lukewarm. With Under the bridgeCritics have been divided and only Lily Gladstone, who plays the indigenous police officer Camila, and Archie Panjab, who plays Suman Virk, Reena’s mother, have received applause, devastated by never having achieved a relationship of complicity with her daughter. In Portugal, this series cannot help but make us think about the case of Gisberta, in a story where clear borders cannot be drawn between victims and villains, since the problem lies in the dehumanization of institutions, States and communities.

Also in Under the bridge Several of the teenagers involved lived in an institution, having been rejected by their families. In that small Canadian town, at the end of the 90s, all the girls romanticized the universe portrayed in hip hop, with their stories of gangsters, gangsters, rebels and femme fatales. Josephine Bell (Jo) was a manipulative teenager who claimed to be a gang leader and surrounded herself with other girls who idolized her and were willing to do anything to gain her recognition. One of them was Reena Virk, whose adoration was close to wanting to be equally blonde, sexy Is Coldthat is, rejecting her body, thereby accepting all kinds of humiliations, orchestrated by Jo.

In a bold and provocative gesture, Reena Virk (Vritika Gupta) steals Josephine’s (Chloe Guidry) diary and calls all her friends, spreading the rumor that she has AIDS. On the night of November 14, 1997, Reena receives a call from Jo to go to a party together and they meet under the Craigflower Bridge. Jo waits by the river, as do her factotums, Kelly (Izzy G.) and Dusty (Aiyana Goodfellow), but also other girls and some boys duly co-opted to “teach Reena a lesson,” including Warren Glowatski (Javon “Wanna” Walton, actor we know from the series Euphoria). This “lesson” consisted of beatings that took her almost to death and cigarette burns on her body, particularly on her forehead, where Indian women traditionally wear the “bindi.” This is not where her death occurred and, when a week later her body appears floating in the waters of the Gorge Waterway, it will not be easy to find those who dealt her the fatal blow.

Cover of the Canadian newspaper “Times Colonial”, from 1997, about the death of the teenager, which gave rise to the Hulu series

The case dragged on for decades in the Canadian courts and definitively changed the lives of all the teenagers involved in the death of the teenager of Indian origin. At the time, police did not consider the crime to be racially motivated, as the teenagers linked to the crime were of various ethnicities, social classes, and socioeconomic statuses. Reena’s family was one of those with better economic conditions. Today, the author of the series, Quinn Shephard, has no doubt that there were “racist motivations” in this murder, as she states in an interview with the magazine Vultureand not realizing this weakened the police investigation, as will be seen.

The episodes are tense, violent, but they masterfully recreate the universe of adolescents, with all their weaknesses, doubts, communication difficulties, but also their desperation to find forms of identification and affection for each other. The narrative begins the night of the crime and follows these seven young people during the several years that the investigation and trial lasted. In addition to Rebecca Godfrey’s book, the screenwriter also used the book written by Manjit Virk, Reena’s father, which tells the story of the brief life of her daughter and how she was an easy target for all kinds of attacks. harassment, since childhood.

Not being a perfect artistic object, Under the bridge It never fails to force us to reflect, not so much (but also) on racism, but on the lack of compassion in societies of technological progress and material abundance.