In December 1 9 7 9, the rich heiress Sunny von Bülow falls inexplicably into a coma, but is revived in the hospital. A year later, the maid finds her unconscious in bed, lying next to her husband, Claus von Bülow, and calls the ambulance. Sunny falls into a coma to never wake up again, having 14 times higher blood sugar levels than normal. An insulin syringe is found in the house. Claus would inherit millions of dollars in the case of her death. Her two kids hire a private prosecutor who indictes Claus, who is sentenced on a trial for attempted murder. For the appeal case, Claus hires lawyer Alan Derschowitz, who reluctantly accepts the case. Alan questions Claus, who claims to be innocent. New details emerge, including that Sunny had hypoglycemia, yet still ate a lot of sugary foods, drank alcohol and took pharmaceutical drugs. At the appeal, Alan convinces the court that Sunny was not injected with insulin, but that the coma came from alcohol and drugs. Claus is declared not guilty.
Based on the Sunny von Bülow case, “Reversal of Fortune” starts out like an Agatha Christie-style whodunit crime mystery, yet it gradually shifts to a meditation on the legal standard of “Beyond a reasonable doubt”, contemplating how difficult it is to reach a conclusion if someone is guilty or not when weighing the totality of the evidence, thereby reaching philosophical spheres of the limits of epistemology. The film’s opening act has Sunny’s body narrating from a coma (!) in an ingenious metafilm idea reminiscent of Wilder’s “Sunset Boulevard”, explaining to the viewers what was found, and it really seems suspicious: Sunny is lying unconscious in bed, her husband Claus sitting right next to her, reading a book, until the maid has to persuade him to call an ambulance. An insulin syringe is found in the house, even though Sunny is not a diabetic.
At first, the case seems clear, he is guilty, but as lawyer Alan Derschowitz appeals the case and questions Claus, one is not so sure what happened anymore. Claus is played brilliantly by Jeremy Irons, the acting maestro who hereby gives his role of a lifetime. Claus is sleazy, spoiled, a wannabe aristocrat, yet he also has some strangely appealing ‘sleaze charm’ and impeccable manners. During a dinner with Alan and his law students, he even jokes on his own behalf: “What do you call a fear of insulin? Claus-traphobia”. As they are walking outside, Alan and Claus have this exchange: “All right, my friend...” - “Friend? I like that.” - “Nothing personal...” The movie makes a “Rashomon”-style presentation of mutiple possibilities—in one, Alan allows for a possibility that it was an accident, caused by a deadly combination of Sunny’s hypoglycemia, alcohol and pharmaceutical drugs; in the other theory, he presumes that Sunny deliberately tried to kill herself, and that Claus didn’t want to react, but just remained passive to let her go—allowing for the viewers to decide for themselves. The biggest flaw is that director Barbet Schroeder didn't show the appeals trial at the end, since it would have been interesting to hear the witnesses, and instead just focused of Alan's preparations for the trial. "Reversal of Fortune" is something like a 'Schrödinger's cat' among crime trial dramas—he may have been guilty, or he may have not been, yet either way the movie intrigues until the end.
Grade:+++
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