THE CRIME IS MINE (B) - What a delightful diversion. Francois Ozon twirls an entertaining screwball comedy set in Paris in 1935 about an actress who exploits the murder of a producer to advance her own career.
Ozon has written and directed some profoundly serious films the past 20 years (as recently as last year's release about a daughter honoring her father's suicide wish, "Everything Went Fine"), but he does have a lighter side. Sometimes, as in 2016 with "The New Girlfriend," he finds a beguiling mix of serious and slapstick. "The Crime Is Mine" is mostly slapstick, a true throwback to the screwball comedies of nearly a century ago (and apparently is loosely adapted from a 1930s French play).
Nadia Tereszkiewicz (above left) stars as Madeleine Verdier, an actress who storms out of a much older producer's home after he pulls a Harvey Weinstein on her. When hours later he turns up dead, Madeleine comes up with the idea of copping to the murder, even through she didn't do it, as a way to put her acting skills to the test on the witness stand and in front of a rapt nation. (She cares much less about marrying her suitor, who is heir to a rubber-tire fortune.) When she is acquitted, with the help of best friend and aspiring lawyer Pauline Mauleon (Rebecca Marder, above right), her career does, indeed, take off.
But Madeleine, it seems, has stolen the thunder of the apparent real killer, faded ingenue Odette Chaumette (a bonkers Isabelle Huppert, above center), who wants her own chunk of the spotlight. Ozon has a ton of fun with this as a courtroom farce and Keystone Cops police procedural. He also lards on the costuming and decor, fully immersed in the era and its style. Huppert balances a giant bright-red fright wig on her head and should have been jailed for theft of scenery instead of murder.
Don't worry too much about the details of the plot and whether and how they might add up. The investigating judge is played by a wonderfully droll Fabrice Luchini, another Ozon favorite. This all would be frivolous and inconsequential if it weren't for the prodigious narrative skills of our generation's best overall storyteller. It's the kind of fun that makes you forget the world outside the dark movie theater.
GODARD CINEMA (B+) - With workmanlike precision, cinematic biographer Cyril Leuthy walks us through the career of Jean-Luc Godard, making the case for the French filmmaker as the foundational voice of the New Wave and what has come after it. Godard broke through in 1960 with "Breathless," and by the end of the '60s, he was burned out on commercial filmmaking, particularly radicalized by the May 1968 protests.
Leuthy, who has previously profiled Godard's contemporary Jean-Pierre Melville, shows a deep understanding of Godard as a man and as an artist. Talking heads are knowledgeable and articulate. The clips are generous. Some of his past loves -- still lovely -- weigh in on the man with a troubled mind.
I'll probably never shake my fascination with Godard, even if I will forever be stranded in his '60s heyday and will never fully grasp his later movies, which just got denser and denser. The mystery is part of the allure; this documentary is a good example of the unpacking that is necessary to peel through the layers of the man and his art. My goal is to re-learn French to a degree advanced enough to not need subtitles for a lot of his later work and make it easier to comprehend the clutter that spills from Godard's mind.
BONUS TRACK
Let's try to update our list of Ozon films, in order from our favorite on down, which is a very short step. They are all worth seeing.
- Under the Sand
- Time to Leave
- 5 x 2
- Young & Beautiful
- The New Girlfriend
- Swimming Pool
- Everything Went Fine
- In the House
- Hideaway
- Frantz
- The Crime Is Mine
- Ricky
- See the Sea
- Double Lover
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