THE CRIME IS MINE - Mark Reviews Movies

The Crime Is Mine, Music Box Films

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | December 23, 2023

French filmmaker François Ozon is no stranger to comedy, but his newest film, called The Crime Is Mine, might be his purest foray into it. The story, from a 1934 play by Georges Berr and Louis Verneuil, features a string of misunderstandings and ironies and satirical jabs revolving around murder. It's fine, though, because the guy probably had it coming.

It's obvious Ozon, who also wrote the screenplay, has taken inspiration from the screwball comedies of the era in which its set. The dialogue is of the rapid-fire variety. The performances are built upon charisma, timing, and the ability to recite all of these lines both at a fast clip and with deadpan delivery. The plot could probably be resolved with some basic logic or straightforward communication on the part of a couple of characters, but where would the fun be in that?

Comedies such as this one possess their own logic. Ozon understands that, embraces it, and makes funny, very charming work of the results.

Take the whole setup, which sees Madeleine Verdier (Nadia Tereszkiewicz), a struggling actor in Paris circa the mid-1930s, accused of the cold-blood murder of a theatrical producer in his bachelor pad in the city. Obviously, she didn't commit the crime. She might be desperate for money, living in an apartment outside the center of the city and behind several months on rent, but her dreams of being in and earning fame from plays and movies far outweigh that. She and her roommate Pauline Mauléon (Rebecca Marder), an equally struggling attorney, have made it this far without resorting to criminal behavior, so why would either of them start now?

Besides, Madeleine is the protagonist of this wacky tale. The basic logic of such material is that our heroes can be quirky, self-effacing, a bit bawdy or risqué, and even dishonest, but it's all with a good reason, because they're good-hearted, decent people in the end.

It's seemingly unthinkable, then, that anyone would believe Madeleine would be capable of murder. A local police inspector (Régis Laspalès) suspects she could be, though, because Madeleine was the last person seen with the producer in his home before he was shot in the head. We already know there was confrontation between the two, because Madeleine explains to Pauline that the producer solicited her to be his mistress and, when she refused, tried to force himself on her. Madeleine hit and bit him, but that was the end of it.

She's not unhappy that the cad is dead, though. That doesn't register with the detective, inspecting judge Gustave Rabusset (Fabrice Luchini), or the prosecutor (played by Michel Fau), who openly fears in his closing statement at Madeleine's trial that, if she's acquitted, men might start being murdered freely by their mistresses or, if their mistresses were discovered, wives. The jokes are funny in the way that setup is, and they're funnier because nobody in the film acts as if they're making a joke.

That's the approach and tone here, which Ozon carries through to the end with a clever sense of rhythm and unceasing momentum. Every character, save for our seemingly flighty but quite cunning protagonists, is some combination of ignorant, naïve, or just plain dumb. It has to be that way, so that the plot continues, but it's also for the humor to function.

The plot isn't just about Madeleine being falsely accused of murder. No, she decides to embrace the accusation, because all of these men are convinced she's guilty anyway, and come up with a defense that would both result in an acquittal and potentially slingshot her into fame—or infamy, which might as well be the same thing in this case. The trial itself isn't the focus of the story, though, but it is a sequence that allows Ozon to address and highlight the themes of rampant hypocrisy and fame as its own brand of public performance that are at the satirical heart of the material.

Whether or not Ozon has anything to say about those matters beyond broad mockery doesn't really matter. The film is smart in the way it examines them, without ever obsessing over or becoming self-serious about them, because that would ruin the comedic illusion, too. Instead, he leaves it to the jokes and the actors delivering them to make the case.

Broadly speaking, we have men like the inspecting judge, who can't see the evidence in front of him (or absence of it that, well, isn't), and Madeleine's beau André Bonnard (Édouard Sulpice), the unwilling and unemployed heir of a car tire empire. He loves Madeleine so much that he's willing to make the "sacrifice" of marrying another woman for money—so he and Madeleine can be financial secure. Does that make any sense? It doesn't, of course, and that says everything we need to know about the guy.

The one exception among the rakish men might be Fernand (Dany Boon), who has profited greatly from the producer's murder. If the truth of his potential decency ever got out, would he be able to be as successful as he is in this society?

All of these performances—especially from the two leads, who are instantly and continuously charming in distinct ways, and Isabelle Huppert, who arrives like a bolt of narcissistic energy as a washed-up silent-movie star with a secret—are perfectly pitched. That's most of the film's work successfully completed, but The Crime Is Mine is a smart, if inherently slight, treat all around.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products