Review: The Crime Is Mine — Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott

The Crime Is Mine

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Runtime: 1 hour 42 minutes

Stars: Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Rebecca Marder, Isabelle Huppert

Writers: François Ozon, Philippe Piazzo, Georges Berr (play)

Director: François Ozon

You will not gain more enjoyment from any recent movie in any language — be it English, French, or Klingon — than with this rapturously screwball comedy from France, a friendly show biz farce that turns a traditional whodunnit into a whodidn’t?

Nadia Tereszkiewicz stars as Madeleine Verdier, a struggling Parisian actress in the early days of talkies. She’s talented and ambitious, but the only “auditions” she can get land her in the lairs of handsy producers who want to introduce her to their casting couches.

After defending her honor yet again at the estate of a show biz cad named Montferrand, Madeleine stalks back home to the ragged Paris flat she shares with an aspiring lawyer, Pauline (Rebecca Marder). No sooner does Madeleine present the lowdown of her most recent casting debacle than a Parisian detective arrives and informs her that the man in question has been murdered in his home.

Questioned by an investigator (veteran star Fabrice Luchini), Madeleine protests that while she didn’t kill the guy, she did have to fight off his advances. If that were true, the investigator responds, then no jury in the land would convict her.

Suddenly, a light goes on in Madeleine’s perpetually unemployed head: What better publicity could there be for an unknown actress than a spectacular trial featuring sex, innocence, and a “not guilty” verdict?

Well, it all goes according to plan…until it doesn’t. Before long Monferrand’s ex (the wonderful Isabelle Huppert), a former screen actress forced into retirement by the arrival of sound, turns up, jealous of all the attention Madeleine is getting.

American audiences are often put off by the persistent too-muchness of many French comedies, in which promising situations are stretched beyond their acceptable limits (The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe), cuteness is amplified to near-toxic levels (Amalie), and sentiment is ladled out like seafood bisque (The Intouchables).

Refreshingly, co-writer/director François Ozon (Under the Sand) at once embraces those traditions and sets them up for a fall as The Crime Is Mine introduces us to one character after another whose inflated sense of self is prime for pricking.

Foremost among them is Huppert’s grandly named Odette Chaumette, a natural born scenery chewer who is more than willing to take the fall for her ex’s murder if it means one last fleeting moment of fame. Huppert, who knows how to infuse comic characters with semi-tragic undertones without getting maudlin about it, proves again she doesn’t make nearly enough comedies. As Madeleine, Tereszkiewicz foregoes the traditional ingenue bit by bringing on a nifty edge. If Madeleine isn’t really the killer, we tell ourselves, she could be.

In the sweetly understated role of Madeleine’s lawyer pal, Marder adds an unexpected sense of wistfulness, playing a woman secretly enamored with her roomie in a way that would never have survived a Hays Office censor.

Funny in unexpected ways, timely despite its period setting, The Crime Is Mine — loosely based on a 1930s French play and two Hollywood comedies of the same era — zips along in the brash tradition of Preston Sturges and Leo McCarey.

Yes, it’s French. But trust me, it’s funny.