When I saw the trailer for the movie "Jodi Arias: Dirty Little Secret" on Lifetime, I was anxious to see how they would portray the Latina that shocked the nation with the cold-blooded murder of her boyfriend. Specially since here at Latin Times we have been covering her trial extensively. How would they tell the story? Would they describe Travis Alexander as a saint, a devil or just a plain human? How much creative license would they use? Lifetime does not necessarily have the best reputation in doing quality material -- think "Liz & Dick: The Untold Story." Nor do they have the best actors -- er, Lindsay Lohan. But they do manage to tell get suspenseful story-lines that are far from boring, alas quite novelized.
With two relatively unknown actors in the lead roles -- Tania Raymonde as Jodi and Jesse Lee Soffer as Travis -- the first impression we get is that Arias is a sex starved woman that would do anything to get laid. We first meet Jodi and Travis in Las Vegas. Jodi is blond, doesn't exude class and is there to have fun. Travis is a preppy guy, a bit of a prude and is there to attend a Mormon convention. After they exchange gazes, he refuses the invitation by the Latina to have sex in her room. Frustrated, Arias says "that's the perfect answer," and they make plans for dinner.
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Since their first date, Arias presents some pathological signs of jealousy and stalking, including checking on her phone constantly, leaving restaurant abruptly where they were having dinner after he greets a female friend and confronting him outside his room to have sex with her. Travis finally gives in and they become lovers. Once back in his native Mesa, Calif., he confesses "I am a Mormon, I shouldn't be doing 90 percent of the things we have done." But he still does and he quites enjoy it.
They see each other every other weekend since Arias lives miles far away. Soon she becomes his secret lover and even though Travis tries to hide her from the world, she introduces herself to his closest friends as his "girlfriend" much to his disapproval. When Arias tries to define their relationship, Travis has a sudden change of conscience and he reminds her that his religion is the most important thing for him and that he plans to marry a Mormon girl one day. This triggers a big jealousy rage attack from Jodi who feels used and starts answering his texts from his phone. When he finds out and he gets mad at her, Jodi has the biggest surprise for him: "I want to be converted to a Mormon," and sure enough, he baptizes her.
This is the only moment in the movie where there's an actual sense of relationship between them. He even suggest to his friends during breakfast that she's an amazing woman who even converted for him. But his friends disapprove. And he dismisses her, too, then: "It's a short-term girlfriend." She listens and makes a big scene which culminates in the end of the relationship. And this where she gets all Bunny Boiler on him.
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Suddenly she's mastering a plan of revenge. After some time passes by, she moves to Costa, meets him "casually" in a supermarket, and they become sex buddies with "absolutely no strings attached." To provoke him, she has sex with other men and sends him pics of the scenes, which causes him to call her a whore and by this time she knows he's addicted to her by doing all the sexual things he can't do with any other Mormon woman. So when they fight and he starts dating a Mormon woman, she continues with plan B of her supposed revenge plot: She cleans up her image, darkens her hair, dresses more conservatively, and she offers a truce. She will be happy and content with being his sex buddy, she swears.
A couple of days before his death, Travis ends his relationship with the Mormon woman but Jodi Arias reads a series of texts they exchanged and understands they are working on their relationship and she will never be with him. This suddenly makes her grab a knife while he's taking a shower -- which she's photographing. Jodi stabs him more than 20 times, in an extremely bloody and frightening scene. She then slits his throat ... and we never see the final scene in which the real Jodi Arias fired a gun to his head after he was already dead.
The next few scenes are just glimpses at her trial. Jodi now dresses like a nun. She wears high-collared shirts, old fashioned glasses and bangs. She looks nothing like the Jodi Arias we saw portrayed before. The movie hints it was part of their defendant strategy. When she suggests Travis was abusive and a sexual deviant that masturbated to pics of male naked young kids, it's too late in the movie to even create the slightest doubt in the spectator. The movie has already portrayed Jodi for almost two hours as a calculating sex-starved and mentally unstable woman, who even if she was used for sexual satisfaction only, she permitted it and from the beginning it was what she supposedly wanted.
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It's too late in the game to ask the audience if she might have a couple of truths behind her statements during her trial, especially when the movie ends and she admits she lied to everyone after the murder.
"Jodi Arias: Dirty Little Secret" is effective in portraying Arias as a unstable woman whose real motives, the audience assumes, might be tied to a jealousy attack. And it does ask us to rethink if her actions qualify for a first-degree murder. But it never delves into Travis' mind. We assume he used her for sex, and certainly he's not depicted as a saint. But we never see things from another point of view other than Jodi's, so it's difficult to not end up hating her because the movie's message is that she brought all this on herself. All in all, this is an an slightly above average movie that could've been much worse. I'd recommend it if you're curious to know the background of Arias' trial.
VIDEO: Interviews with the cast of "Jodi Arias: Dirty Little Secret"
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