Love Crime

Alain Corneau died in the fall of 2010 and his last film Love Crime has just been released in the US. Corneau worked with some of the great actors in international cinema and became quite good at small, dark suspenseful films realized without special effects or emotional excess. Two of his best early films are Police Python 357 (1976) and La Menace (1977). Both star the wonderfully droll Yves Montand as a trapped hero trying to get away from tough policemen using his ingenuity and criminal instinct. The complexity of plot--including the withholding of critical information to build suspense--became an important aspect of Corneau's storytelling throughout his career. Séire Noire (1979), a searing adaptation of pulp master Jim Thompson's book Hell of a Woman, was one of his most artistically successful films. Living up to it's title the film featured particularly strange and quirky performances by Patrick Dewaere, as a door-to-door salesman and Marie Trintignant, who Corneau would work with four other times, as a psychologically complex prostitute. Corneau later worked with Gérard Depardieu in Tous les matins du monde (Every morning of the world), the 1991 biographical story of the classical musician Monsieur de Sainte Colombe and, most recently, with Daniel Auteuil and Monica Bellucci in a 2007 remake of the Jean-Pierre Melville gangster noir Le Deuxieme Soufflé (Second Breath).

Love Crime engages on an intellectual level but withholds anything that might allow us to make an emotional connection to the characters in the story. It is a predatory and purely business-like existence that Corneau portrays, a milieu in which the art of the deal far outweighs the pleasures of life. The only joy experienced by the characters in the film are when they are moving up the ladder of success, pleasing their bosses (and everyone has a boss) so that they can pad their portfolios--and their egos--without regard to the health or wellness of anyone else. Like the Wall Street films there is a purity of intention that feels close to the truth, especially in the world of high finance. The missing ingredient, the thing that Oliver Stone does so well, is the operatic touch--the "I am master of the universe" posturing--that elevates the villainy to a level of gleeful mayhem. Nastiness for the sake of being nasty is one thing--but nastiness done with style and swagger can become a guilty pleasure.

Though I left Love Crime with a sense of exasperation at the idea that I was ultimately being asked to pull for a self-serving, possibly psychopathic (I wont give it fully away) potential murderer, I do appreciate the ingenuity and cinematic effort of the filmmaker, writer and the outstanding cast. Corneau (with Nathalie Carter) has crafted a creepy and suspenseful original script that takes some unusual chances--specifically the decision to give away the mystery of who commits the crime in order to explore the more complex question of why the crime was committed and what the real intention of the killer is. Following Hitchcock's theory that suspense is more exciting than mystery, Corneau shows us the murder with the intention of making us identify with the killer. Love Crime is a story with more than one twist that concocts an interesting strategy to keep the viewer engaged--despite a lack of sympathy for the main characters.

The casting is excellent and the quality of the acting is the saving grace of the film. Ludivine Sagnier, who played Sarrab, the stylish prostitute in this year's The Devil's Double, had a central role in The Girl Cut In Two (2007), a film by Claude Chabrol (one of Corneau's spiritual mentors) and was outstanding as a severely troubled young woman who targets a middle-aged woman writer in Fronçois Ozon's Swimming Pool (2003), is mesmerizing as Isabelle, and an executive on her way up in a large French corporation. We meet her in the very opening scene taking notes at the large and lovely home of Christine, her boss. Though we learn that they have worked together for some time, and that Isabelle has been instrumental working behind the scenes to build the success of the company--specifically creating rewarding situations for Christine--their relationship seems to be taking a turn towards intimacy. In what is probably the first encounter in Christine's opulent home the meeting begins to dissolve from business to relaxation - Christine gives Isabelle the expensive scarf the underling has complimented her on, Isabelle accepts a glass of wine and slips off her shoes when Christine isn't looking, and Christine fleetingly caresses Isabelle's neck and whispers in her ear. It is a scene with professional and sexual tension - made all the more interesting because we must piece together the nature of their relationship from the gestures and reactions that take place between them.

Sagnier's Isabelle seems completely overwhelmed by her powerful and confident boss--who is brought to life in a cold professional way by Kristen Scott Thomas, who was excellent as a determined journalist in the recent Sarah's Key and unforgettable as Katherine in The English Patient (1996). Christine is a calculating and determined corporate president who uses her talented assistant to attain success--without sharing the credit that might diminish her own perceived accomplishments. Thomas plays the role with such perfection that one wishes there was more depth to the character for her to sink her acting teeth into. For instance, was she once married? Does she have a family? Did she claw her way up or was success handed to her? We only know that Christine is powerful, efficient, and ruthless--ready to humiliate those who refuse to do her bidding.

Isabelle's vulnerability suggests a simplicity that may or may not be accurate. But for Daniel, her male assistant (Guillaume Marquet), she might go on in the supplicating relationship indefinitely. But Daniel slowly opens her eyes to the value she brings to Christine--and to her own potential for success if she is willing to assume her place in the corporate power structure. Rather than continue to work behind the scenes for Christine's success he plants ideas in her mind that gradually opens her eyes to a potential for her own empowerment that she never imagined.

One problem with Isabelle's actions is that the script muddles, intentionally or not, the state of her mental health. We learn that the previous assistant to Christine lost her mind, supposedly because of job and relationship pressure. Pushed by Christine's demands Isabelle calls her doctor and begins to take numerous antidepressants, returning, it seems, to a state of mind that defined her life before joining the corporation. The complexities of the story are heightened by the misfortunes of Philipe (a sympathetic Patrick Mille), who begins as Christine's lover, is seemingly passed on to Isabelle, then is revealed to have fallen into some serious fiscal mismanagement at the corporation. This love triangle forms the basis of the plot complexities of the second half of the film--as Isabelle allows herself to be convicted for a crime that we know she committed--and then seems to be manipulating the situation in a way that is first confusing and then, possibly, ingenious. Complete with black and white flashbacks meant to explain what "really" happened, the denouement of the story veers at times into the tired style of television police dramas.

Love Crime gives the mind--and the conscience--a good workout.  It's a calculating thriller that--not surprisingly--is being reworked by Brian DePalma for an American release next year. If you are looking for a French film that is dark and filled with non-stop action Fred Cavayé's recent release Point Blank is a far superior offering. But if you are satisfied with swimming around in the morally empty and manipulative world of the corporate battlefield Love Crime delivers with a cold and brutal efficiency.

                                                Thomas W. Campbell