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Love Crime (DVD)

by D.M. Bradley | December 19, 2011 11:58 | Edited December 19, 2011 14:00

"...can’t offset the distinctly and distastefully conservative underpinnings here."

Co-writer/director Alain Corneau died shortly after completing this French thriller, which gave it plenty of publicity and helped many audiences see past its many serious flaws.

 

Beginning abruptly indeed, we're introduced to icy corporate bigtimer Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas) and young, slightly uneasy associate Isabelle (Ludivine Sagnier), working late in the night in Christine's swank apartment and immediately engaging in loaded dialogue, intimations of same-sex attraction, neck-nibblings and the like, much of which makes Isabelle's chunky nerd glasses fog up. The manipulative Christine says that Isabelle should go to Cairo with Philippe (Patrick Mille) to finalise a major deal for the agri-industry firm, and this leads to spreadsheets and bedsheets for the pair, but when Isabelle returns Christine begins to torment and humiliate her junior more daringly (and risibly), embarrassing her at an office party, badmouthing her to colleagues and playing lots of clichéd psychodrama cards until the plot takes a nutty turn, and we're suddenly into a second-half storyline that you might have been expecting all along - but not at this pitch of silliness.

 

Kristin and Ludivine try hard to make this heavy-handed nonsense work and almost do, ensuring that Christine and Isabelle seem almost human until the script requires both to start screeching and freaking out. But even they can't offset the distinctly and distastefully conservative underpinnings here, as two of the mightiest misogynist stereotypes are offered up in all their grotesque glory: the ruthless, childless monster (Christine), who delights in torturing her underlings, and the naïve, bespectacled waif who has no idea, at first, what it takes to be a success in a corporate/man's world - but soon learns how to be a killer bitch.