The Netflix catalog is well stocked in the section true crimesthat is to say those of documentaries dedicated to news items. Making a Murderer, The Murders of Alcàsser, Gregory (on the Villemin affair), Emanuela Orlandi, the disappeared from the Vatican – whose case has just experienced yet another twist – are among the most memorable. A documentary mini-series, The Last Hours of Mario Biondo directed by María Pulido, joined this list of most recommendable on August 3. It has been, since its release, the most viewed content on the platform in Italy, and the second most popular in Spain. On the other hand, it left in a quasi-indifference in France.
However, it deserves attention, because the three episodes clearly stand out from the usual construction of Netflix productions in terms of criminal investigations. It is much less a question here of returning to the possible flaws of the investigations or of elucidating a mystery than of evoking the consequences of the impossibility of mourning. Explanations.
Once upon a time there was a people couple…
Mario Biondo is Italian. Raquel Sánchez Silva is Spanish. In 2011, he was a cameraman on the set of Survivors: Perdidos in Hondurasthe Spanish equivalent of Koh Lanta of which she is the star host. They fall in love, get married in 2012, and settle under the same roof in Madrid (Spain). On May 30, 2013, Mario was found by the housekeeper, hanging from a shelf. He was 30 years old. The night before, Raquel had gone to Plasencia, some 250 km from the Spanish capital, to help her uncle who was supposed to be hospitalized the next day. The documentary reconstructs Biondo’s final hours based on police reports as well as his bank and phone records. He would thus have gone out in the middle of the night, would have withdrawn money, would have gone to a bar, where he paid for several drinks, then returned to his home where he was last seen on the landing by his neighbor. The medical examiner ruled it a suicide. The investigators considered, among other things, the trail of autoerotic asphyxia. This is the beginning of a psychodrama which, since then, has not ceased to feed the sections people and news items in Spain and Italy.
An inconsolable family
The parents, the sister and the brother of Mario Biondo refuse to accept the conclusions of the police and the justice. All four testify in this documentary mini-series. For them, it is unthinkable that the young man could have consumed cocaine or risked practicing autoerotic asphyxiation. On the other hand, they have strong suspicions towards Raquel Sánchez Silva. They do not hide the antipathy she inspires in them, describing her as a cold woman who did not wish to mingle with them. For them, the host, seven years older than Mario, has something to do with the death of their loved one. The spouses had they not argued on May 29 about the child they could not conceive? And then, shortly after the funeral, the widow maintained the trip to the sun that the lovebirds had long planned. Another grievance held against her: the fact of having posted photos of her on the beach on her social networks, which is not, according to some, an attitude worthy of a woman in mourning.
If different tracks are mentioned (including that of the possible presence of two people in the apartment at the time of the death of Mario Biondo), their plausibility is quickly swept away. The narration may well play the suspense, it unfolds on another table than that of mystery. Each twist, in other words, each new hypothesis presented by the family, is undermined in the process. What is obvious is the denial of the Biondos. Tearful, they refuse to see reality in the face, starting with the mother, Santina d’Alessandro. Three autopsies have been performed on Mario’s body, in Spain and Italy, in the space of ten years, and all concluded in suicide. “To deny reality is one thing. Finding a culprit is another. It’s quite different. As long as we are looking for a culprit, we feel alive. You are not alone in your room, in the dark, to suffer”, analyzes the transalpine journalist Selvaggia Lucarelli, one of the witnesses of the mini-series.
An obsession around Raquel Sánchez Silva
The Last Hours of Mario Biondo therefore turns out to be the story of an obsession: that of doing everything so that Raquel Sánchez Silva is declared guilty, going through legal remedies or online harassment. For ten years, the Biondos were invited to broadcasts with large audiences in Spain and Italy. They recount their fight in order to bring out “their truth” and comment on the latest pseudo-rebound.
Many journalists, animators and animators find themselves actors in this melodramatic thriller played live, where tears flow and where disarray is shouted. A sequence of archives thus shows Maria Venier, a very popular presenter in Italy, full of commiseration with regard to the Biondo parents, as a friend of the family would be. These stars of the small screen “say that this is not the time to suffer but to [se] beat and all that takes you away from reality,” comments Selvaggia Lucarelli.
The controversy is reignited
In the end, the objective of the three episodes is to rehabilitate the honor and reputation of Raquel Sánchez Silva. However, if the Spanish host hoped that The Last Hours of Mario Biondo allow him to turn the page, nothing is less certain. The one who has since rebuilt her life by marrying, in 2015, Matías Dumont (with whom she had two sons), refused to speak in front of María Pulido’s camera.
On the other hand, her former manager, Guillermo Gomez, recounts in her place the difficult ordeals she went through and insists on the unfair treatment she suffered. Guillermo Gomez is also, as pointed out El Mundoone of two men at the helm of PAR Produccionnes, the company that produced The Last Hours of Mario Biondo. The family of the deceased claims to have learned this only after the filming of the interviews. “The interview lasted six hours and they cut and edited everything in their own way. Same thing with the other speakers who testified in favor of the homicide thesis,” Santina d’Alessandro told the site. DonnaClick.it. In line with the words she has been saying for a decade, she says she has “been duped”, that everything is only “lie” and “invention”.
At the same time, Internet users react on X (ex-Twitter) by putting a coin in the conspiracy theory jukebox. The documentary series, however, recalls the eloquent figures of this case: despite the “16 Spanish judges, two Italian judges, five prosecutors, 13 experts, two exhumations and three autopsies” involved in the case, the fact that it is a suicide has never been questioned.
It would also have been possible to do without an unfortunate timing – which could not have escaped the platform: Netflix put online at the beginning of July Falso Amor (renamed Fake Love in France), a reality show in which couples put their love to the test of artificial intelligence and deepfakes. Who presents this program? Raquel Sanchez Silva.