The Crime is Mine
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M, 102 minutes
3 stars
Two heads are better than one. So it goes, for two young women, an actress and a lawyer, who share an apartment together in Paris in the 1930s. It's hard to get by in a world when the competition in their lines of work is fierce and where merit doesn't necessarily earn a reward.
Madeleine (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) is desperate for a decent speaking part and Pauline (Rebecca Marder) needs a good client.
Their pesky landlord has just been knocking on their door for the rent, now months in arrears, when Madeleine returns from an appointment with a famous theatre producer, Montferrand (a brief cameo from Jean-Christophe Bouvet), who is found murdered shortly afterwards. She is disillusioned with her lot, enough to admit she is guilty despite her innocence, and opt for prison to escape a life of penury.
Pauline won't hear of it and concocts a defence that just might persuade a jury and restore her friend's freedom on the grounds of legitimate self-defence. It will help that blonde Madeleine has the attributes of a screen sex goddess. From the snatches of jazz to the fashions to a light witty tone, this new film from Francois Ozon is, as he has acknowledged, a homage to the screwball comedies of Hollywood in the 1930s. Like those films, there is a playfulness on the surface with some underlying serious themes.
The Crime is Mine doesn't try to disguise the fact that it is loosely based on theatre. The play Mon Crime was written by Georges Berr and Louis Verneuil in 1934. It's intriguing that there were at that time several real-life high-profile cases of French women put on trial then for murder. What's also fascinating about mid-1930s France is that women hadn't yet been granted the right to vote, and wouldn't until the end of World War II.
To help keep things light, Ozon has included the popular comic actor, Dany Boon, to help him out in this comedy of gender relations.
This new film from Francois Ozon is a homage to the screwball comedies of Hollywood in the 1930s.
It is far from unusual for writer-director Ozon, who is openly gay, to turn his attention to female characters, as he has here.
The wonderful Isabelle Huppert appears as Odette Chaumette, a character who in the original theatre play was a man.
She chews up the furniture as the wronged miscreant who must also have her due.
Huppert is not the only actor over 65 to appear here in a significant role.
Fabrice Luchini appears as the corrupt judge, and Andre Dusollier appears as the industrialist patriarch who disapproves of his son Andre (Edouard Sulpice) marrying Madeleine, a lowly actress.
These and other male actors of a certain age form part of the male establishment that gets a generally bad rap here.
The Crime is Mine is another contribution to the growing number of films with something to say post #MeToo.
At the end of this theatrical romp, no one leaves empty-handed during the general tidy-up. Everyone, except for the very dead producer Montferrand, comes away with something.
That is more than you can say for much of what we watch today.
