My crime ***
by Francois Ozon
French film, 1 h 43
Here is a comedy as we would like it to come out every week. Funny, rhythmic, beautifully performed and sparkling with intelligence, it assumes its dose of fantasy as well as lightness in a period that is gloomy to say the least and, under the guise of pastiche, instills an ultra-contemporary point of view, particularly jubilant in the post #MeToo era.
From this point of view, François Ozon has a job and partly takes up the recipes already at work in eight women et Vase. A somewhat outdated boulevard play, a sparkling cast, lively dialogues and powerful women who take their revenge on an era that pays so little attention to them.
Beautiful precision mechanics
It is no coincidence that the crime that occupies the film is that of a rich, lecherous producer. And if it is two women – Madeleine, a young actress accused of murder (Nadia Tereszkiewicz), and Pauline, her lawyer friend (Rebecca Marder) – who will win their case in a resounding trial, defying a judicial authority entirely between the hands of men and their sexist prejudices, from the incompetent examining magistrate (Fabrice Luchini) to the general counsel (Michel Fau), passing by the president of the court (Daniel Prévost).
The affair propels Madeleine and Pauline from a sordid maid’s room, where they brooded over their thwarted ambitions, to a luxurious private mansion, opening the doors of glory and success to them. Before the real assassin, another woman, comes to claim the paternity of “his crime”.
François Ozon was freely inspired by a successful 1934 play by Georges Berr and Louis Verneuil to build this delectable fantasy. From where an inspiration which sails between the « screwball comedy » (zany comedy) American à la Frank Capra and a French cinema with an assumed theatricality, like that of a Sacha Guitry whose subject we would have reversed. Dummy sets, submachine gun flow and biting irony serve the beautiful precision mechanics designed by the filmmaker. And give pride of place to a host of actors who overplay their score with contagious pleasure.
We find regulars there – Fabrice Luchini, André Dussollier and an unleashed Isabelle Huppert as an old-fashioned silent actress – but also more unexpected figures, such as those of Régis Laspalès as a vicious investigator, or a Dany Boon with a Marseille accent whose the opposite role holds other surprises. In this theater of artifice where women reign supreme, appearances are sometimes deceiving and lies have accents of truth. Isn’t that fundamentally the essence of cinema?