Love Crime

French director Alain Corneau’s final film, Love Crime details the chaos that ensues after a cold, calculating executive (Kristen Scott Thomas’ Christine) effectively declares war on a well-meaning underling (Ludivine Sagnier’s Isabelle). There’s little doubt that Love Crime gets off to a rather underwhelming start, as Corneau places the emphasis on characters that have absolutely no basis in reality (eg Isabelle inexplicably sleeps with Christine’s boyfriend). The movie’s typically French atmosphere of relentless chatter certainly doesn’t help matters, with the aggressively talky vibe exacerbated by a storyline that’s almost absurdly stale (ie it really doesn’t get more hackneyed than backbiting in the business world). And while the movie does improve temporarily as Isabelle begins to embark on a promisingly elaborate campaign of revenge, Corneau squanders this aspect of the proceedings by offering up an absurdly prolonged stretch in which Isabelle goes to prison for her misdeeds and the truth about what she really did comes out over the course of the movie’s interminable second half. The delay in revealing just what Isabelle did is nothing short of infuriating, and the viewer ultimately can’t help but wish that Corneau would just get on with it already – which effectively cements Love Crime‘s place as an utterly misguided (and surprisingly unwatchable) piece of work.

1/2* out of ****