Title: Love Crime

Opens: September 2, 2011

Director Alain Corneau and co-scripter Nathalie Carter are dangerous people. Watch out. Their intricately plotted tale of love and skullduggery shows them to be capable of the perfect crime. Though Mr. Corneau died recently, I would guess that Nathalie Carter could likely work out a robbery, a kidnapping, a murder and assuredly get away with these felonies. That’s how credible and involving is this complex tale of love, sex, envy, and humiliation—all the things that make office politics so intriguing.

While director Corneau may be interested in a taking pot shots at capitalism’s piñata, the multi-national corporations, he is far more interested in showing not how the public may get shafted by the machinations of these powerful bodies but in displaying the high stakes that envelop their major players—stakes that involve more than simple backbiting and other relatively minor treacheries.

The two players, Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas) and Isabelle (Ludivine Sagnier), are executive vice president and her protégé respectively. In the opening scene Christine is hosting Isabelle in the former’s own, lavish home in the Paris suburbs, but work is not the only thing on the boss’s mind as she flirts with Isabelle, to the latter’s dismay. When Philippe (Patrick Miller), Christine’s other colleague and apparent lover, enters, Isabelle discreetly makes her exit. When Christine, in a boldly manipulative gesture, send Isabelle and Philippe to Cairo to negotiate a deal, taking undue credit for a marketing idea from Isabelle, the two travelers see less of that beautiful if currently troubled city than they do of the ceiling of their five-star hotel. All events behind closed doors seem so predictable to Christine that she could have been pulling the puppet strings herself. When Daniel (Guillaume Marquet), another executive, takes Isabelle’s side, advising her to take proper credit where credit is due, the stage is set for melodramatics that appear to involve a near emotional breakdown by Isabelle. What follows is a series of twists that will keep the audience baffled. We in our theater seats wonder why Isabelle is so willing to take the blame for a heinous act that she is accused of committing as she is the only player who seems to have a motive.

“Love Crime” makes Meryl Streep’s performance as big boss Miranda Priestly in David Frankel’s “The Devil Wears Prada” little more than child’s play: that’s how Kristin Scott Thomas’s signature cold and crafty act comes across. For a good example of how humiliation can turn a stable, fun-loving person into a nervous wreck, take another look at the director’s terrific “Fear and Trembling” (Stupeur et tremblements), as its principal character Amélie, played winningly by Sylvie Testud, is stabbed in the back (figuratively in this case) by the person she least suspects. If you still believe that boys are made of snips and snails and puppy-dog tales while girls are all sugar and spice and all things nice, prepare to lose your innocence.

Unrated. 106 minutes. (c) 2011 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

Overall – A-