Love Is the Perfect Crime

The movie is so strange that probably even its creators don't know what they wanted to say. There's a lot of snow accompanied by endless tobacco smoking, sexually obsessed girls, sick professor and pointless dialogs. There's no thrill in this thriller, and there's no decent acting. However, the landscape and the urban design are really beautiful, and that's why I added one point. This is a movie that would've been much, much better if nobody filmed it.

The film is in French with English subtitles and was shown as part of the Glasgow Film Festival.

The film opens with a night ride in a car up a snowy mountain. The driving is somewhat erratic and the occupants seem a little drunk. It is clear that this is an amorous liaison. The first of many in fact. The film, 15+ certificate, could in fact be subtitled: 'More Sex Please, We're Swiss'.

The film continues with the drive down the mountain. Again, and perhaps even more so this time, we get the sense of how dangerous it is to drive on these mountain roads. This is emphasised by the filming, which is very well done. It is further emphasised by the music, but sadly the music is just too loud and intrusive at this point. It is the only problem with the music, after this, all music is perfectly placed in the film to highlight the scenes. Much of the music is ambient and psychedelic and fits in very well with the feel of the film. There are also some well placed love songs with ponderous lyrics, and these also fit in well.

Film is about that walking cliché; the literature professor with the roving eye. And boy! does his eye rove! We see this clearly as he arrives to take his class. Entering this very modern place of learning, we find our very modern professor's eye roving around. Again, this is shown well in the filming. Much of this movie is shot from the professor's POV.

The professor seems to occupy two worlds. He lives up the mountain but works down the mountain. His home is an old-fashioned wood-built chalet, like that of 'Belle and Sebastian' or 'Heidi' and 'Goat' Peter. Down in the valley his place of work is so modern and futuristic looking, it would not look out of place in a SF film. Throughout the film these contrasts are shown well. The mountain scenery is stunning and is also shot well. There are scenes with a fresh look to them, others with a colder and darker wintery-look to them.

Travel between the mountain and the valley takes up a lot of time, especially if you stop off for a bit of recreational sex, but our professor does entertain us with his excuses. However this film is no French farce but rather a Hitchcockian suspense film. In style it reminded this reviewer of Sidney Gilliat's 'Endless Night' (1972) and Danny Boyle's 'Trance' of last year.

The acting in this film is universally superb. The male lead, playing the role of the professor, really seems to be able to convey his character to the audience, be it wolfing down his food, or just by looking or staring. A tour-de-force! He is however well supported by the three main actresses.

If therefore you like an erotic, raunchy, sexy, suspense-thriller, with tense twists, hanky-panky, hankys of blood, and buckets of sex, then you will enjoy this film. As the main protagonist in this film is a French-speaking, student-seducing, literature professor, there will be lots of philosophical and ponderous speaking too.

Good stuff! Oh la la! 10/10.

... and the scorpion said to the frog ...

This is my third Larrieu brothers film. I like their work because they have found a way to work within the film industry that does not involve the streets and houses of Paris (however beautiful these streets and houses may be). The peace and quietude of the Pyrenees are their environment, and the source of the pleasure these films bring me.

The acting by Amalric, Viard, Maiwenn and Forestier is strong. The occasional unlikely development in the script doesn't bother me because the actors are on target all the time. How about Forestier as the nightmare co-ed of the decade, if not of all time? And Karin Viard whose neurotic sister is very well drawn. Amalric always impresses me, he's really the strongest actor in France now. Only trouble: 10-15 minutes could easily have been cut to make a tighter story.

Terrific snowbound locations are pretty much the only asset of this inert, predictable, overlong thriller. Mathieu Amalric is miscast as a middle-aged Don Juan (he is so irresistible that young girls PAY HIM to spend some private time with him, and even his sister cannot keep her hands off him). Maïwenn is also miscast as a femme fatale. *1/2 out of 4.

L'amour est un crime parfait or Love is the Perfect Crime has two big things going for it. They are in no specific order; the gorgeous alpine locations and interesting post-modern university settings and the first act which intriguingly does manage to hook you into hanging around for the final outcome.

Unfortunately the second and third acts are increasingly filled with so many red herrings and almost unbelievably melodramatic contrivances on the part of the script writers, we know before we get there that the denouement will be unsatisfactory in the extreme. And so it proves to be.

We are never presented with a motive/reason for the first killing/murder, though sleep-walking (LOL!) is suggested. There is no real reason given for the siblings' odd relationship, apart from a mention that "their mother was too hard on them". Wow! I wondered why there was (plainly) an over-emphasis on the protagonist's smoking (to ridiculous lengths) in the film. And it was clearly to set up the climax with a bang. And seriously, if a big time gangster wanted to intimidate/investigate a character, I could never see them going to the theatrical lengths that are presented in this shaggy dog joke of a film.

The big reveal/twist when it appears is just laughable and just adds to the evidence that like a cheap Christmas gift gaudily packaged, Love is the Perfect Crime is all style with little substance.