Love Crime (2010)

This is a great little French thriller, with a well-thought out plot that requires considerable acting ability on the part of Ludivine Sagnier's character.Ludivine was almost visionary in this picture. She stared out of every shot like someone possessed. Perhaps that's what she thinks ambition looks like.Sadly, little was made of her great figure. Photographs from "Swimming Pool" her American hit, prove that she has great breasts, worthy of a few shots in a film about a crime of passion.However, Ludivine's sex scenes with her love-object, her bosses's lover Phillipe are almost a joke. She rips off her clothes in a fury, but we glimpse not so much as a thigh, let alone a mammary gland. The director sadly died 12 days after the film's release, so perhaps he had lost interest in sex.Ludivine's crime is fantastic. She poses as utterly mad, eating barrels of supposed madness pills, and leaving all kinds of evidence that she indeed stabbed her evil boss to death. Then, hey presto, somehow she persuades the cops she never did it. Miraculous escape!Whereupon, she regains her position in the company and sees off her lover with her boss's document against him, a copy of which she had kept for this purpose. A very long-sighted character with brilliant acting ability. In the end, she thrives and we wish her all the best, even if we never saw her breasts.

For the first couple of reels this is little more than Mike Nichol's 'Working Girl' with a French accent then Corneau subtly changes gear and ups the ante. To be honest I would have wished Corneau a better swansong than this. The film he made immediately prior to this - a genuine remake of Melville's Le Deuxieme Soufflé - was flawed and one longed for him to get back to the great days personified by Police Python 357. I've always had an aversion to Ludo Sagnier just as she long had an aversion to working with her clothes on (ironically, this time around she even coyly pulls a sheet around her to get out of bed) the truth of the matter is she's just that that much of an actress naked or fully clothed. No matter, Kristin Scott Thomas is well up to the task of carrying Sagnier - and most everyone else too, if anybody asks you. It's pleasant enough though the twists are not so much turns of the screw as rotations of a thumb-tack. Good for one viewing.

Alain Corneau wrote (with Nathalie Carter) and directed this little French thriller about the extremes to which people will go to maintain their goals - and the spatter of mess they leave behind on everyone who comes into contact with them. Despite a fine cast of actors this story is one in which the audience simply doesn't care about anyone involved. Bad things happen to bad people, and that concept is taken to extremes.Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas) is a wealthy corporate executive in Paris who makes international deals through her brainy cunning. Her protégé is the equally bright but less world-wise Isabelle (Ludivine Sagnier). At times it appears that Christine wants to be in a relationship with Isabelle but at the same time Christine has a lover Philippe (Patrick Mille) who works for her and who incidentally is also sleeping with Isabelle. Games are played; Christine takes credit for Isabelle's ideas in a manipulative way to gain a position in the US. Two tigers cannot in the same environment survive and Isabelle carefully plots the murder of Christine: we see Isabelle stabbing Christine to death. After the murder Isabelle, in an apparent drugged state, confesses to the murder and is sent to jail. But the story is far from over as Isabelle's brilliant and now criminal mind knows how to manipulate this predicament as well as Christine would have had the tables been turned.Despite the fact that both Kristin Scott Thomas and Ludivine Sagnier are both extraordinarily beautiful women and superb actors, neither is a character with whom we can empathize much less care. Yes the plot is a brilliant Hitchcock type story and the film, though it drags in many places, is very well made. But in the end we are left in an emotional vacuum. Where is the love of the title? Grady Harp

"Love Crime" is a story set in a firm with a tense conflict between two of its top female executives. Unscrupulous boss Christine (Kristen Scott-Thomas) steals credit for a big project by her idealistic assistant Isabelle (Ludivine Sangnier). Christine never would have imagined the lengths "naive" Isabelle would go to in order to turn the tables on her ruthless boss.As European films go, the pace is very slow. It was so slow that you can already see the predictable ending within the first half hour of the film. It was interesting to see how Isabelle plotted and executed her revenge, but it just took to long to tell the story. The extremely dull acting style of Ludivine Sangnier as Isabelle is so sleepy! She practically had one wide-eyed face during the whole film.I sought this film out because it will have an American remake entitled "Passion" by no less than master of suspense Brian de Palma, starring Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace. I look forward to that to see how de Palma could improve the lackluster story-telling of "Love Crime."