Original title: Mon Crime
France • Comedy/Thriller • Year: 2023 • Running time: 102 mins
Language: French/Spanish/English
Audience Response: 17 slips returned
- ‘Excellent’: 5 vote
- Very Good’: 8 votes
- ‘Good’: 4 votes
- ‘Satisfactory’: 0 votes
- ‘Poor’: 0 votes
Read the comments here or visit the “The Crime Is Mine” discussion page to join in the conversation.
Synopsis:
In 1930s Paris, Madeleine, a pretty, young, penniless (and talentless) actress, is accused of murdering the lascivious French producer, Montferrand. Helped by her best friend Pauline, a young unemployed lawyer, she is acquitted on the grounds of self-defence. A new life of fame and success begins, until the truth comes out; however, the truth is in the eye of the beholder.
François Ozon’s fanfic for the Jazz Age steers clear of pastiche and is utterly charming — throwing a few curveballs to keep you on your toes.
Miriam Balanescu (Empire Magazine)
Director: François Ozon
Frantz (2016) / The New Girlfriend (2014) / In The House (2012)
Writers: François Ozon • Philippe Piazzo • Georges Berr
Main Cast:
| Nadia Tereszkiewicz | Madeleine Verdier |
| Rebecca Marder | Pauline Mauléon |
| Isabelle Huppert | Odette Chaumette |
| Fabrice Luchini | Le juge Gustave Rabusset |
| Dany Boon | Fernand Palmarède |
(for full cast list, additional technical information and reviews, please visit the The Crime Is Mine pages in IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes)
Film Notes:
The 1934 French play ‘Mon Crime’ by George Berr and Louis Verneuil has already been adapted for two American films, True Confession (1937) with Carole Lombard and Cross My Heart (1946) with Betty Hutton. Now François Ozon has ‘loosely’ adapted it again in this 2023 movie.
The story, with its ever twisting and turning plot, is still set in Paris in 1935. This allows for Isabelle Huppert to play the ageing silent film actress Odette Chaumette, now sidelined by the ‘talkies’. Madeleine, a struggling actress, and Pauline, a client-chasing lawyer, share a run-down flat. When Madeleine is tried for the murder of theatre producer Montferrand, a Harvey Weinstein figure, and is sensationally acquitted, she becomes an overnight celebrity and the work pours in. Odette, deeply resentful, claims that she is Montferrand’s murderer: If fame is the result of murdering a ‘seducer of actresses’, then she wants a slice of it, if not the whole cake!
Talking of cake, some critics have suggested that Ozon has created a film with maybe rather too much cream on top, a “crowd-pleasing theatrical comedy… watching it is like being force-fed a large box of chocolates. Moreish though!” (Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian). But this is the Club’s pre-Christmas offering and we’ve had some serious diet to digest so far. So tuck in and, hopefully, enjoy this comedy. I’m loath to use this term, however, as the last time I described one of our films as a ‘comedy’ a member told me that they couldn’t find anything in it to laugh about!