This documentary traces the story of the sisters Christine and Léa Papin, two housemaids who, in Le Mans in February 1933 brutally murdered Madame Lancelin and her daughter Geneviève. The Panorama programme also includes a feature film on the same subject, Les blessures assassines, by Jean-Pierre Denis.
What was life like for housemaids in a bourgeois household in Le Mans in the thirties? The Papin sisters worked for the Lancelin family for seven years; they even called Madame Lancelin ‘maman’. Who were these people that the two young women were working for? How did the court cope with the fact that, although the murder weapons were found and a confession was made, no motive for the murder could be established? And what about Léa Papin, the younger of the two sisters? Léa finished serving her prison sentence, but her official date of death is not known. How did she live – and how did she die?
The sisters’ story has fascinated many people over the years and prompted many a big name in French literature (such as Jean Genet, Jean-Paul Satre, Simone de Beauvoir, Paul Eluard, Benjamin Peret and Jacques Lacan) to make it the subject of their writings.
The idea for this documentary came from Laurent and Michèle Pétin, the producers of the above-mentioned feature film, who wanted to try and tackle some of the questions raised by their film. –Berlinale