Love Crime (Monday, August 22, 2011) (72)

Alain Corneu's Love Crime owes everything that it is to Alfred Hitchcock. It is a noir-murder mystery very much in Hitch's style, down to the blond heroine and brunette villainess. It is, however, nothing close to anything he would have made, because the details that are the hallmark of his films are nowhere to be found here; this is the film Hitch would have made if he had had no imagination.

Isabelle (Ludivine Sagnier... God, she's gorgeous) is the hardworking assistant to Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas... who can only make movies in French now) in an international business firm. As the film opens, we see Isa at Christine's house preparing for an upcoming meeting. Christine hits on Isa, who is clearly shocked by the overture, but also interested by it. Just then, Philippe (Patrick Mille) comes in to break up the tension. He's a client of the firm and Christine's lover.

Christine sends Isa to Cairo to present a deal to new clients. Her pitch goes off brilliantly and she celebrates with Philippe (who is there for the presentation) over a fancy dinner and roll in the sheets (French men are sluts). Back at the office, Christine, takes full credit for Isa's success, much to her consternation. Their relationship falls apart from there and culminates with Isa murdering Christine. It's unclear exactly why she does it, and also what her plan is to get away with it.

Whereas Hitch shows the amazing and meticulous detail of murder in a gripping, if mundane, dispassionate, way in Rope or Dial M for Murder, here Corneau takes out all the beauty and interesting minutiae and basically shows us a list of actions. It's an interesting difference that might have a lot to do with camera placement and depth of focus approaches of both directors (and a great lesson on the brilliance of Hitch).

Hitch shoots these expository scenes from far away or with short lenses that expand the frame, sometimes shortening the depth of a shot; Corneau, on the other hand, shoots this long murder and cover-up sequence mostly in close-ups or with longer lenses, isolating Isabelle (not a big problem for me, as I love looking at Sagnier up close) and merely presenting these mundane elements just as mundane elements. It reminds me of the expression that someone "is so interesting you could listen to them read the phone book". Here we have a very boring person just reading a phone book ... and it comes off sounding like a phone book.

The murder itself is weirdly direct and sudden with almost nothing shown to get us to expect it. In an interesting touch, Corneau uses a Pharoah Sanders jazz saxophone score layered over the action, adding a nonchalance to the act. I actually like this and respect the boldness of such a oddly fitting sound from what we are seeing (the conflict of the visual and the aural are wonderful), but it's almost too artistic for the overall tone of the film. It also hard to keep from laughing when you see Sagnier dressed in a white anti-bacterial suit as she does the deed (she really looks like an oompa loompa with a knife... you'll get no commercials).

Corneau uses two visual themes throughout the film, Isa in her bed going to sleep and Isa eating breakfast in her kitchen. They both seem to create a shorthand for showing her as a meticulous person who has a spotless house, who is almost totally isolated from warmth and love, who has few passions in her life but is still not average (as clean as she is shown to be, she might be the worst dish-washer I've ever seen on screen). As with the music choice, I like the strangeness of these scenes and how they break up the flow of action we see. I think they're ultimately unnecessary, or at least there should be fewer of them, but again, I like Corneau's daring to include them.

As much as I like looking at (OK - watching) Sagnier, I have to admit that her performances are wildly inconsistent from one to the next. Here she is actually pretty wonderful as the workaholic woman who clearly cares more about her job than her her physical appearance or dating life. In one scene when Christine comes on to Isa, there is an amazing moment where we see Sagnier's eyes change at the realization that she's being hit on; later we see a similar change in her look when she is given a work assignment. Clearly she is a good actor, perhaps some of the roles she gets are less interesting.

Aside from the overall polished and banal look of the film (why couldn't have been shot like a classic noir?) I really don't like that the narrative here is rather obscure. We never really learn why Isa does what she does. Is it really a crime of passion or is it a complicated way of getting rid of her boss to get promoted? There is almost no look into her psychology - not even through objective correlatives or stylized lighting and mise-en-scene. The murder is almost comically sudden and unprovoked. There are clearly some good elements here, but the overall aroma of the piece is stinky and underdeveloped.

Stars: 1.5 of 4 Stars