The Crime Is Mine (Mon Crime)

 

Director François Ozon

Ozon with Rebecca Marder and Nadia Tereszkiewicz

Ozon with Fabrice Luchini and Isabelle Huppert

THE CRIME IS MINE (Mon Crime)            B                                                                      France  (102 mi)  2023  ‘Scope  d: François Ozon

Doing justice has nothing to do with what’s just.                                                                          —Judge Gustave Rabusset (Fabrice Luchini)

Following the earlier works of 8 WOMEN (2002) and Potiche (2010), set in the 50’s and 70’s, Ozon has crafted a third installment in a trilogy of films exploring the status of women, specifically “the hold men have over women,” where this may be France’s answer to the #MeToo movement, a campaign against sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and rape culture in which survivors, led by the voices of women, especially public figures, share their experiences of sexual abuse or sexual harassment.  In France, a person who makes a sexual harassment complaint at work is reprimanded or fired 40% of the time, while the accused person is typically not investigated or punished at all ("'Revolt' in France Against Sexual Harassment Hits Cultural Resistance").  The Harvey Weinstein scandal of sexual abuse allegations played a pivotal role in the emergence and global spread of the #MeToo movement in 2017, when more than eighty women accused Weinstein of sexual assault, harassment, and rape over a period of thirty years, where casting couch practices (soliciting sexual favors from a job applicant in exchange for employment) skewed the sexual politics of Hollywood, which normalized the behavior due to the prevalence of sexually aggressive men with positions of authority in the film industry.  While this serves as a backdrop to the film, Ozon has turned it into a hilarious sex farce moving at a breakneck pace, told with a light tone of sophistication and irreverence through the point of view of several enterprising women who turn tragedy into financial success beyond their dreams, with obvious allusions to Harvey Weinstein and his “invitations” for actresses to audition for him, which is just an excuse to sexually take advantage of them.  Freely adapted by Ozon and Philippe Piazzo from the 1934 French play Mon Crime by Georges Berr and Louis Verneuil where the protagonists were husband and wife, it has twice been adapted into Hollywood screwball romps, featuring Carole Lombard in Wesley Ruggles’ TRUE CONFESSION (1937) and Betty Hutton in John Berry’s CROSS MY HEART (1946).  Set in a romanticized Paris during the 1930’s, it opens with a theatrical curtain rising, followed by an inert shot of a view across the pool leading to a massive estate, where we hear shouting in the distance before a frantic young woman rushes away in tears, making her way down a crowded city street bumping into people.  This is our introduction to Madeleine Verdier (Nadia Tereszkiewicz), a struggling blonde actress with her brunette friend Pauline Mauléon (Rebecca Marder), an out-of-work lawyer with no cases, sharing a cramped Parisian studio where they are forced to share a single bed.  Behind on their rent, they do a diversionary two-step dance with the landlord, a somewhat feeble-minded man, making short work of his true intentions to collect payment as he is easily distracted by the teasing manner of their fake histrionics, pleading poverty as if it was a virtue, always claiming they have the best of intentions.  Madeleine’s boyfriend is André Bonnard (Édouard Sulpice), the heir to a huge Bonnard tire fortune, making him an excellent marriage prospect and the answer to their problems, but he refuses to work or even accept money from his father (André Dussollier), so he’s really a layabout, of no help whatsoever.  While there is a hint of queer attraction on the part of Pauline for Madeleine, and are even shown bathing together, but nothing ever develops, as the actress seems oblivious to it.     

Making things worse, they are paid a visit by Inspector Brun (Régis Laspalès), who informs them that famous theater producer Montferrand (Jean-Christophe Bouvet), the massively wealthy older man Madeleine met before her rapid departure, was found murdered, making her a suspect, as she was one of the last to see him before she left under questionable circumstances.  Describing him as a “dirty old pig” who wouldn’t stop grabbing her at an audition, willing to offer her a job only if she agreed to have sex with him, she quickly dismissed his offer, refusing to trade her body for a coveted role.  Undeterred by the news, the women quickly go out to the cinema, watching Billy Wilder’s first directorial effort, his only European film, MAUVAISE GRAINE (BAD SEED) (1934), a story about a good-for-nothing playboy (mirroring André) who enjoys a hedonistic lifestyle thanks to his father’s immense wealth and ends up joining a gang of car thieves.  Shot in France during Wilder’s migration from Germany to the United States when he was fleeing from the threat of the Nazis, the film stars Danielle Darrieux, one of the original eight women in Ozon’s EIGHT WOMEN, whose jazz-infused songs are heard throughout the film, Le bonheur c'est un rien Danielle Darrieux YouTube (2:56), like a ringing reminder of more innocent times and how quickly it was all forgotten, as the decade began with the Great Depression and ended on the brink of global war.  While the women are out, however, Inspector Brun sneaks back inside their apartment searching for evidence, finding a revolver that could end up being the murder weapon.  Earlier, a weary and emotionally despondent Madeleine feigned suicide with that same gun, “I’m a bad actress, you’re a bad lawyer, no one loves us.  Let’s be sensible and kill ourselves,” only to be deterred by Pauline, “No, it’s a beautiful day, and I have sandwiches.”  The overly biased investigating judge, Gustave Rabusset, an over-the-top Fabrice Luchini, the bewildered schoolmaster in Ozon’s In the House (Dans La Maison) (2012), is quickly convinced of Madeleine's guilt, based entirely on speculation, like a shot in the dark where he’s literally connecting the dots hoping it actually leads to something.  Madeleine claims she rebuffed his unwanted sexual advances, finding him lecherously vile and pathetic, but fled when he tried to sexually assault her, and left while he was very much alive, and is about to denounce the judge’s theory, but Pauline holds her back, with the judge acknowledging that if she can plead self-defense, she may not be found guilty, as France has a history of leniency in “crimes of passion.”  The fact that she didn’t commit the crime feels irrelevant, as Pauline springs into action, suddenly finding herself a case, deciding to make the trial a symbol of male oppression and abuse of women, which quickly makes sensational headlines as a cause célėbre.  In a world where reality and fiction merge, it’s impossible not to see parallels to today’s scandal and social media-obsessed world, with people willing to do anything to become famous.  Madeleine gives the performance of a lifetime posing as a wronged woman protecting her virtue, with rehearsed lines and carefully selected costumes, where Pauline’s closing argument ends in a rousing feminist speech exposing the hypocrisy of French male society to the delight of the courtroom audience and the media, as Madeleine is acquitted and immediately becomes a major film and stage star, while Pauline’s career as a lawyer takes off and the two women move to a luxurious house in Neuilly.  Using theater as an existential metaphor, the film is about the duplicity of words and the endless motives of an action, with Ozon never forgetting that women, using femininity as a weapon or tool, can be formidable manipulators to satisfy their lofty ambitions, where achieving justice can be achieved through means that aren’t necessarily based on fairness or truth, often resorting to a hall of mirrors and camouflages. 

A satiric comedy about misogyny and the abuse of power, the film is essentially an exploration of the dynamics of power and the complicated status of women, continuing themes explored in Ozon’s Peter von Kant (2022), a gender reversal re-interpretation of Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (Die Bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant) (1972).  Ozon adroitly frames anti-feminist positions in sophisticated settings, where all the male characters are fools, either deluded or ridiculously pompous, while poking holes at a corrupt judicial system, as the female characters shine in triumph, like voices of liberation.  Playfully mixing together elements of theater and film, with opulent sets and smart staging, the film is a battle of wits, flaunting a biting feminist edge and campy humor, suggesting violence was often the only way women had to evade sexual harassment, reminding viewers that women in France did not have the right to vote until the postwar elections of 1945, could not marry freely, or even have their own checking account, where the road to success lay in the traditional role of marriage or in being someone’s mistress, an option these women abhor.  Just as the film begins to luxuriate in its rags-to-riches success story, Ozon introduces his most deviously wacky character in the form of scene-stealing Isabelle Huppert as eccentric silent film star Odette Chaumette, arriving in a flurry of chaos, draped in furs and feathers, with wonderfully absurd flaming orange hair that resembles a Toulouse-Lautrec poster.  All remember her former glory, like an homage to famous French actress Sarah Bernhardt, still dressed in turn-of-the-century theater attire, but she’s disappeared from public prominence, and now returns with a vengeance, claiming she’s the real murderer, and that these women have stolen her thunder, manipulating the headlines into successful careers, demanding recompense or she’ll spill the beans, exposing them as frauds while displaying a penchant for blackmail, ridiculously declaring with utmost sincerity, “The crime is mine!”  An over-the-top screwball comedy that plays fast and loose with the facts, the theatricality of the original play has taut, witty lines, accentuated by rapid-fire dialogue and dizzying flashbacks that feel more imaginary than real, with Ozon playfully adding contemporary themes.  At the end of the film, Madeleine and Odette combine forces to star in a play recreating the crime we did not see at the beginning, thumbing their noses at rampant sexism, mercilessly mocking entrenched bourgeois manners, accentuated by the acidic realism of black and white newsreel clips of famous female criminals of the 30’s, like the infamous Papin case, Christine and Léa Papin, the story of two sisters thought to have had incestuous relations.  Employed as maids, subject to written detailed instructions demanding perfection that would pass the “white glove test,” they killed their employer and her daughter in a particularly brutal manner, gouging the mother’s eyes and mutilating their bodies with a kitchen knife, the source material of Jean Genet’s The Maids, with many identifying the crime as a symbol for class struggle, also Violette Nozière (murderer), a French woman who accused her father of sexually abusing her, but was convicted of murdering her father, poisoning her parents with barbiturates, but her mother miraculously survived.  These gruesome events punctuate the otherwise richly colored action, as do references to the music and popular film culture of the 1930’s.  Huppert, by the way, played Violette Noziėre in Claude Chabrol’s screen adaptation VIOLETTE (1978), winning the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival, so her presence is no mere coincidence, while Luchini also had a small role in that film.  With lavish period costumes and art deco sets, the lush scale of the film is much more extravagant than typically minimalist Ozon films, with a dazzling medley of images and sounds, where it’s clear they had a riot making this film, with Ozon back to his mischievous ways.  

Voyage en Deuce

 

Director Michel Deville

VOYAGE EN DOUCE         A-                                                                                            France  (98 mi)  1980  d: Michel Deville

What women talk about when men aren’t around.                                                                        —film tagline

Michel Deville found great critical and box-office success in France, perhaps achieving his greatest success with LA LECTRICE (THE READER) in 1988, but was relatively unknown abroad, never to achieve the international notoriety of New Wave contemporaries like Godard or Truffaut.  While made in 1980, this film is reminiscent of the playful spirit of the 60’s, which was a decade obsessed with frequent flashbacks, an aesthetic that felt so liberating at the time, like an ode to freedom, including the dizzying flashback sequences in Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962), Federico Fellini’s 8 ½ (1963), Wojciech Has’ THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT (1965), Sergio Leone’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968), or Robert Enrico’s ZITA (1968), and curious narrative experimentation in the early 70’s from Rivette’s Céline and Julie Go Boating (Céline et Julie vont en bateau) (1974), which this film emulates, where music seems to open an imaginary portal into the world of erotic daydreams through an elegant use of Beethoven Bagatelles (Beethoven: 6 Bagatelles, Op. 126 - 4. Presto - YouTube 4:18) played by Katia Labèque that provide a seductive, A Midsummer Night’s Dream spirit of reverie.  The lightness of touch is compelling, essentially the story of two women, friends since childhood, who relate to each other with such a tender affection, exquisitely expressed by the performances of Dominique Sanda and Geraldine Chaplin, with Sanda so riveting in Bresson’s Une Femme Douce (1969) and also Bertolucci’s The Conformist (Il Conformista) (1970) and 1900 NOVACENTO (1976), while Chaplin, the daughter of Charlie Chaplin who is best known for her ditzy, off-kilter performances of unstable characters, worked with Robert Altman in Nashville (1975) and A Wedding (1978), as well as Alan Rudolph in WELCOME TO L.A. (1976).  Hélène (Sanda) and Lucie (Chaplin) are both married, Hélène with two young children and Lucie childless, but like so many of us, their lives fall short of their youthful expectations.  Deville shows a distinctive interest in developing the female characters by exploring personality traits, as the blond Hélène is bolder, more outwardly aggressive yet culturally refined and sophisticated, a writer of children’s books, showing endless signs of being curiously inquisitive, while the brunette Lucie is fragile, emotionally torn, more easily hurt and brought to tears, something of a drama queen and prone to exaggerate, pampered and groomed by Hélène, with both exuding a charm filled with alluring feminine mysteries, as Deville displays a unique ability to direct women onscreen.  While this film is directed by a man, it’s a sensuous exploration of female desires and recollections, mostly seen through the eyes of Hélène, whose sexual fantasies are sensuously visualized on the screen, told in a very literary style, notable for its episodic flashback structure, derived from 15 different anecdotes by 15 different French writers of both sexes.  There is no limit to the reach of fantasy, especially in contrast to the banality of our lives, yet this film allows a deeply repressed sensuality and sensitivity to resurface, showing none of the surreal sexual perversity of Buñuel, as this is more tastefully refined, more character driven, where the luxurious beauty of the sunny French Provencal landscape is cleverly integrated into the dreaminess of the storyline. 

When Deville decided to become a film director, he asked Cahiers du Cinéma magazine editor Éric Rohmer, whose articles he appreciated, to cowrite his first film with him, but Rohmer was already working on The Sign of Leo (Le signe du lion) (1959), so instead he decided to work hand-in-hand with editor Nina Companeez, who was particularly gifted in dialogue, and the two ended up collaborating on 12 films together.  He also discovered another major influence, costume designer, assistant, producer, and cowriter Rosalinde Damamme, who he ended up marrying, so there is a distinct woman’s touch in this film.  Opening with a sensuous concert performance of Brahms Lieder by British soprano Valerie Masterson, Christa Ludwig sings Brahms "Sapphische Ode" - YouTube (2:59), it opens yet quickly departs from the conventional male gaze, where a point-of-view shot of a man sitting in front row seats next to Hélène drifts to the singer’s cleavage, where it appears she’s singing just for him, with everyone else erased from the room, ending with a long shot of the concert hall where all have left except this privileged male viewer and the singer still onstage locked in his gaze.  This diversion from reality sets the tone, disconnected from the rest of the storyline, but it does exemplify how the mind wanders into its own realm, as if on its own, where the essence of this film blends eroticism into elaborately realized flashback sequences, with men primarily relegated to the background, becoming more of an attempt to explore the female psyche.  Afterwards Hélène discovers Lucie sitting outside her door, terribly distraught and in tears after an argument with her husband, convinced its time to leave him, though what she describes hardly seems like grounds to break up, instead she’s unhappy with the trajectory of her own life, and he’s easiest to blame.  Hélène listens intently, but has to laugh when she discovers much of what she hears is completely made up, thinking a road trip is the right medicine, that it will nourish and revitalize the soul, so the two women decide to take a road trip from Paris to southern Provencal in search of a summer house to rent. The brief glimpse we have of Hélène’s home life paints a portrait of domestic happiness, yet it also feels equally restricted by societal convention.  So their trip is defined by an exchange of fantasies and flirtations, both real and imagined, which are smart and engaging, though nothing is ever clarified or spelled out, with reveries and flashbacks replacing a conventional narrative, as both women attempt to fill an emotional void, tenderly narrated by each women, opening up a more adventurous and risky world that has been notably absent from their more cautious lives, where the journey is an opportunity to taste undiscovered freedom, filled with eye-opening, voyeuristic revelations that may haunt viewers for years to come.             

Once they hit the road, a passing train, like in an Antonioni movie, evokes a fleeting childhood memory that suddenly resurfaces with its intensity intact, with Marion Gautier (Hélène at fifteen years old) and Myriam Roulet (Lucie at fifteen years old), offering personalized insight that literally teases audiences with a provocative sexual subtext, recalling the innocence of Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Valerie a týden divu) (1970), though channeled through a modern sensibility when expressed as an adult.  The closeness of the women is never in dispute, displaying surprising tenderness and affection, with titillating signs of a lesbian romance that is only hinted at and never realized.  Sanda is exquisitely sensual in her aloof beauty, appearing soft and cool, while the nervously impatient Chaplin is allowed to expand her range, delivering one of her career best performances, as the women flirtatiously dance around each other throughout their escapades.  In one encounter, Hélène coaches an adolescent male waiter delivering room service, both lying in bed in their hotel room, on the proper technique to kiss a woman, instructing him to pay attention to the surrounding erogenous zones, inflaming her desire merely by insinuating what’s about to occur, which has the effect of stimulating his own desire, which they teasingly make fun of, taking advantage of his youthful inexperience, exiting in a flurry of embarrassed humiliation.  In another rather amusing yet inflinching moment, Hélène sits around a table of elderly grandmothers sipping tea and starts masturbating, which they don’t even notice.  This sense of manipulative provocation empowers both of them, taking delight in exploring the beauty of the French countryside as they visit several picturesque houses, with Hélène photographing Lucie in the idyllic surroundings, who gets in the mood by getting au natural before the camera, telling stories that are tinged with fantasy, allowing them to play out in the viewer’s imaginations through the eloquent narrations while also seeing a luminous visualization, with the Beethoven piano music beautifully providing the texture of these sensitive stories.  As they explore their friendship, which encapsulates their lives, the mood shifts on a dime as Lucie recalls a horrific rape, which is heard on audio only, playing out the excruciatingly ugly details, think Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible (Irréversible) (2002), while Lucie and Helene are seen in a series of elegantly composed long shots walking slowly through the countryside in an idyllic setting of pastoral serenity.  The chilling effect of how this moment is realized is simply stunning, as it taps into a full range of raw emotions that defines just how well executed this small gem of a film really is, remaining imprinted into our imaginations, even after the passing of nearly half a century.  By the end of the film we return to the male gaze, and it feels so astonishingly different, with the women switching places, as the two personalities blend into one, having reconsidered and reevaluated their lives, with Lucie dutifully returning to her husband while Hélène sits on the landing outside her own door, having shed that former persona, now seeing herself in a new and completely different light.  Boldly adventurous, daring to go where few films are willing to go today, as the use of nudity is sparing, but effective, an unforgettable experience from such an impressionistic, female-forwarded film that resounds with such astute artistry.