The Netflix true-crime docuseries may have jumped the shark a couple of times, but when they’re good they can be very, very good, and Room 2806, a four-parter about the very serious accusation of sexual assault against Dominique Strauss-Kahn (‘DSK’) when he was at the peak of his power, intellect and ability, is very, very good. Compellingly structured and movingly told, featuring interviews with Strauss-Kahn’s victim Nafissatou Diallo, other women accusing Strauss-Kahn of other crimes, investigating officers, attorneys and French officials of all stripes and statures who have known Strauss-Kahn over the years, it paints another brutal portrait of a man who could have done so much good if he hadn’t done such terrible bad, and the women whose lives were torpedoed by it. Massive in scope, encompassing not only the case but the media frenzy surrounding it both in the US and France, the political fall-out and its place in the historical timeline of #metoo, this is a superb, gripping and vital production. It also demonstrates – perhaps reinforces – a cultural attitude to sexual misbehaviour among a certain strata of French society that would be hilarious in its stereotypical self-ownership were it not so tragically misaligned in relation to DSK’s particular predilections.
When you’re done, see if you can find Abel Ferrara’s 2014 film Welcome to New York, which dramatises some of these events and stars – perfectly – Gérard Depardieu as (a renamed version of) DSK.
