Love Crime (French: Crime d’amour), 2010.
Directed by Alain Corneau.
Starring Ludivine Sagnier, Kristin Scott Thomas and Patrick Mille.
SYNOPSIS:
When ruthless business executive Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas) is threatened by her young and ambitious protégé Isabelle (Laudivine Sagnier), she begins to undermine and toy with Isabelle’s naive innocence. The fallout changes the lives of both women forever.
Originally released in its native France back in the summer of 2010, Crime d’amour (Love Crime) finally makes its way onto DVD here in the UK following a theatrical release as recently as late 2012.
Love Crime is the final film of French filmmaker Alain Corneau, who passed away just shortly after the film’s release. This tragedy contributes an additional emotion to the experience of watching Love Crime, if only in that it is a full stop on the career of a man who has worked with French acting royalty including Gérard Depardieu, Catherine Deneuve and Daniel Auteuil. So what can we make of his farewell?
One of the striking visual elements of the film is just how immaculately clean – still with that new sparkle – the settings are, from the homes of the characters, to the workplaces, even the car park and the prison.
Perhaps it is Corneau’s intention for this immaculate and ordered setting aided by the smoothness of his cinematography to offset the chaos of the characters’ relationships, which often if not in a state of conflict, then one can sense an uncomfortable tension – the proverbial gunpowder keg.
It is a striking and skilled way in which Corneau offsets his characters with setting, adopting visual language to also have the settings mimic the characters, the immaculate sets a mirror image of Isabelle’s ordered and meticulous mind. If there is a weakness in the way Corneau uses the image, then it is that at times the film feels sterile, perfect to the point that it feels that you are watching something artificial (the irony of that statement does not fail to escape me).
This clinical feel prevents Love Crime being a traditionally immersive experience. Isabelle in the end toys with us just as much as she does with the other characters. We are privy to certain information, but other bits of information we become privy to only when the other characters become aware of the information. If the film is about Isabelle’s manipulation of her world, then we too are part of the world and its cast of characters she toys with.
There is no mistaking that Sagnier is the star of the film, and those coming to it for Kristin Scott Thomas who primarily features in the film’s set-up may be left disappointed.
Laudivine Sagnier has already amassed an interesting body of work: The Girl Cut in Two directed by Claude Chabrol (the French Hitchcock), Mesrine: Public Enemy #1 and Killer Instinct with Vincent Cassel and more recently The Devil’s Double, as well as starring in François Ozon’s Swimming Pool and 8 Women.
Here in Love Crime we see Sagnier create an instinctual character, transforming from the submissive role of protégé to the more dominant role. She is an intriguing character to watch, defined by her career and almost robotic or automated by nature. Despite a potential propensity for ambitious ruthlessness, Corneau and Sagnier create sympathy for her through our perceived loneliness, her victimisation and emotional breakdown, as well as her relinquished desire for something more. Or perhaps it as simple as this: we all dislike a bully, and Christine is just that. But throughout we are willing to forgive Isabelle, never fully taking sides against her, despite moments where we ask the question, has she stepped over the line? Is Isabelle just a little too callous?
If indeed the “Windows are the eyes to the soul”, Sagnier and Scott Thomas have taken this literally in their performances. Their eyes are their most prominent feature, betraying everything about them, their insecurities, fears, sadness, to the calculating malice of their cerebral minds.
A critic recently marked out Jake Gyllenhall as one of the finest actors capable of acting with his eyes to me in conversation, and watching Love Crime I was reminded of this observation. It is a joy to watch these two actresses in a state of first admiration and then conflict; two actresses who exploit their eyes and make them the centrepiece of their performances; Corneau choosing the final image, the final thing we see to be the light from Sagnier’s eyes.
Love Crime is an entertaining film, and whilst it starts slow, it soon accelerates through the conflict to evolve into what is best described as a con movie. Corneau’s clinical take on this type of story compares perhaps to Soderbergh’s final – well allegedly – film Side Effects, in which the emotions were not suppressed beneath the rigid clinical world of individuals motivated by their professions; emotions having free reign.
Then that is the point which links these two movies; the exploitation of emotions for the individual’s gain. Though whereas emotion is exhibited throughout Side Effects, Corneau represses and controls his characters emotions, though the end is the same; emotions depicted as a tool for characters to employ in their devious and malicious machinations.
Love Crime is a fitting final film for Corneau, a pleasant little gem to conclude his career, and beneath the veil of simplicity Corneau shows his ability to inspire performances and plot an intriguing character driven story that leaves you utterly compelled to see it through to its conclusion. Bravo Corneau. You shall be missed.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Paul Risker is co-editor in chief of Wages of Film, freelance writer and contributor to Flickering Myth and Scream The Horror Magazine.
Originally published April 22, 2013. Updated November 6, 2019.
