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.  

You Hurt My Feelings

 

Writer/director Nicole Holofcener

Holofcener with Julia Louis-Dreyfus

YOU HURT MY FEELINGS             C                                                                                    USA  (93 mi)  2023  d: Nicole Holofcener

The whole world is falling apart, and this is what’s consuming you?                                          —Don (Tobias Menzies)

In an era where it’s often hard to distinguish an actual movie from television, as they’ve become one and the same, this leans decisively towards the world of television, never once actually feeling like a movie, more like a sitcom, as there’s nothing cinematic about it and instead seems designed to be seen on a small screen instead of a theater, which does not enhance the viewing experience.  From the maker of Enough Said (2013), starring Seinfeld’s own Julia Louis-Dreyfus and The Soprano’s star James Gandolfini in his final film role, it does not appear that the passage of time has done anything to improve the abilities of this director, though in her films dating struggles have now given way to parenting problems, yet there’s simply nothing imaginative about the story or the way it’s presented, where this just feels like something written exclusively for television, as it’s only mildly entertaining and largely forgettable.  Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival in 2023, the premise of the film happens to be that writers tend to be extremely insecure, where the least little criticism can send them into an emotional tailspin that sends them over the edge, questioning their talent and self-worth, always seeking personal validation, revealing our own deeply embedded insecurities in how much we value the approval of others.  Julia Louis-Dreyfus is Beth, a writer who is struggling to follow up on her last effort, which was a somewhat successful memoir about the verbal abuse she received from her father, now delving into the world of fiction with her first novel, which feels much more open-ended, like a world that’s harder to crack, and it’s causing her all kinds of anxiety and self-doubt.  Beth is also a creative writing instructor, leading a small class of would-be writers, encouraging them to read fragments of their work, exploring ideas and materials, where her role is offering creative support, even after she hilariously discovers they have never read her work.  Her husband Don (Tobias Menzies), on the other hand, is a psychotherapist, like Nanni Moretti in The Son's Room (La stanza del figlio) (2001), but finds himself alienated from his clients, whose problems interest him less and less, discovering he is less engaged, where he actually mixes up the personal histories of his patients.  Together, however, they have that happy marriage, part of New York’s middle class in Manhattan, where the city itself is a character that weaves in and out of the storyline.  Raised on the Upper West Side, Holofcener grew up as an extra on the sets of Woody Allen’s TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN (1969) and SLEEPER (1973) before working as a production assistant for A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982) and assistant editor on Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), while her mother Carol Joffe was Allen’s frequent set decorator, and her stepfather Charles H. Joffe was the executive producer for fifty years of Allen’s films, placing her smack dab in the middle of a burgeoning New York City arts scene, where she was taught by none other than Martin Scorsese at Columbia University’s film school.  Much of Holofcener’s work has a realistic yet satiric style, most of it shot on location, where she seems to have built a career around superfluous characters and stunted emotional growth, creating a comedy of manners that examines the lives of the upper middle bourgeoisie, often intellectual, and from a female perspective, making seven features, though most of her work has come in television. 

While Holofcener likes to complain that nobody has seen her films, with critics suggesting that not much happens in her films, which may be filled with “little daily dramas,” or what Beth describes as her “little narcissistic world,” and while plot may not be her strong suit, much more focus is spent on character and dialogue.  Still, much like the central character in this film, she may have insecurities about her work, where the things people say matter, though in the bigger picture she may overlook much of the criticism, but when it comes from her inner circle, that makes all the difference.  Julia Louis-Dreyfus is one of the most successful comedic actresses in television history, bringing a silliness, a quirkiness, and most of all an intelligence when it comes to her screen roles, blending emotional authenticity with a heavy dose of irreverence, with Holofcener writing the part with her in mind.  While Beth is comfortable visiting bookstores, she has a habit of trying to move the location of her books into a more prominent position, offering greater accessibility to the public, which is viewed as small-minded and petty, thinking exclusively of herself, showing little regard for the other authors.  And though she has painfully been going through the rewrites on her novel, she is disappointed to learn that her publisher believes it is still in need of many more rewrites before it’s ready for publishing, immediately thinking of herself as a failure, second guessing her every move.  Her 23-year old son Eliot (Owen Teague) is a budding playwright, feeling the pressure of having a writer for a mother, unable to realize his own writing ambitions, so he works in a low-key job as a store clerk in a cannabis store, which causes his mother endless worry, as it attracts a fringe element of lowlifes and derelicts, where the lone security guard looks asleep half the time.  Beth’s sister Sarah (Michaela Watkins) is an interior designer, but faces constant rejection from demanding upscale clients, spending her days scouring the Upper West and East sides searching for just the right products, where the callousness of her clients matches the tastelessness of their choices.  Her husband Mark (Arian Moayed) is a budding actor who never seems to find work, always on the verge of professional failure, but he hangs around the fringes of the industry hoping something falls his way.  What seems apparent, however, is that everyone is suffocating from their own mediocrity.  A common thread is watching a cyclical rotation of Don’s patients, none of whom seem to get any better, perhaps best represented by real-life married couple Amber Tamblyn and David Cross in the first time they’ve appeared in a film together, who hold little love for each other, yet are inseparable, as they can’t live without complaining about their partners.  A familiar refrain that runs through this picture is an utter dissatisfaction with their work, which has a way of feeling existentially soul-crushing, mirroring the anxieties they feel about growing older, as they’re not as young and cute as they used to be, where small satisfactions loom larger, yet they can’t shake the fear that impending mortality lies around every corner.  

What really sets the wheels in motion, however, is Beth accidentally overhearing a discussion between Don and Mark, where her husband honestly confesses he really didn’t like the latest work she’s written, which hits her like a ton of bricks, as he’s been her staunchest supporter.  They’re the kind of married couple that finishes each other’s sentences, sharing one another’s food, even licking from the same ice cream cone, which drives their son nuts, finding it disgusting.  Considering the reliability of the source, feeling utterly betrayed, she falls into a depression, turning a cold shoulder, avoiding him like the plague, but refuses to share what’s on her mind, instead allowing it fester, growing passive-aggressive, where she just grows angrier and more indignant.  Her entire relationship is shaken, not knowing who to trust anymore, as the foundation of their marriage has suddenly been exposed as a lie, losing all sense of equilibrium.  None of the characters are fully developed, feeling more like caricatures, yet they continue to utter smart-assed remarks for comic value, feeling very hit or miss, where the only one in the entire film that feels real is Beth’s aging mother Georgia, played by the great Jeannie Berlin, daughter of Elaine May and so powerful in Kenneth Lonergan’s 2011 Top Ten Films of the Year #2 Margaret, as her dialogue never feels forced or couched in comedy, sounding very much like a proud Jewish mother who wants the best for her children, even as they’ve grown into fledgling adults, still filled with the same insecurities and deficiencies they had in childhood, but they’ve also developed much greater intelligence and talent.  She’s insistent that Beth’s publisher hasn’t done a good job marketing her book, urging her to seek out another, convinced that her daughter is a great writer.  And she could easily be, but you’d never know it, as none of the characters are internalized or self-reflective, feeling very surface level, where the film is a series of incidents that only exacerbate the differences and commonalities between us, where the things that drive us apart also bring us together, where there’s a thin line between love and hate.  Julia Louis-Dreyfus is the center of the picture, with everything revolving around her, and, as always, she’s commercially appealing, observant of those around her, like a stand-in for the director, where this single incident has made her question everything in their relationship, dredging up the past, where suddenly everything is seen in a new and different light.  Everyone feels the need to be valued, in all aspects of our existence, where doubt, or silence, upsets our feelings.  A film about trust, lies, and the things we say to the people we love most, where encouragement is not always supported by the truth, oftentimes hiding our true feelings with little white lies, yet offering our full support, irrespective of how we feel, is what matters most, as we want the best out of those closest to us.  None of this is revelatory or earth-shaking, or particularly profound, but it’s ensconced in a feel-good air of white-privileged, middle class contentment.