Criminal Lovers/Les Amants Criminels (1999) - Ozon impresses with carnal crime drama

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+ Best French Movie of the Year + Worst Dollar Return of the Year: 0.18 Times Its Cost

 

Sexual intimacy and fresh blood allure from this out-of-focus poster for François Ozon's Criminal Lovers

Alice and Luc are young lovers, but Luc is not so starving for sex as Alice had hoped. Together they murder a guy, who wanted to get in her pants and escapes, - but gets captured in a forest lodge.

 

Criminal Lovers is written by Marcia Romano (Standing Tall/La Tête Haute (2015)), Annabelle Perrichon (Deep in the Woods/Promenons-nous dans les Bois (2000)) and great French co-writer/director François Ozon (See the Sea/Regarde la Mer (1997)).

The plot is sufficiently dramatic, and the structure only gives us the truth behind the planned murder drip by drip. Natacha Régnier (Orly (2010)) and especially Jérémie Renier (The War in Paris/La Guerre à Paris (2002)) are good as the young lovers, who lack a strong moral compass. - But where do they come from? The film doesn't dwell on this or give us any hints.

Instead it cultivates their transgressive adventure, where nudity and sexual scenes fill up a great deal. The scenes between Renier and the owner of the lodge are quite unusual and will for some be kinky and titillating while for others perverse. (SPOILER The man gets comfortable in the role of a submissive slave.)

Criminal Lovers is a dark sexual adventure for the initiated, although it does only get us to a more or less satisfying position as spectators, distanced some to the characters, who copulate near the animals of the forest in one enjoyable scene.

 

Related posts:

 

François Ozon: Swimming Pool (2003) - Rampling and Sagnier stand out in Ozon's suggestive, sensual thriller 

1999 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess

 

 

Watch a short clip from the film here

 

Cost: Uncertain, reportedly at least 'under 2 mil. $'

Box office:  Unknown - likely in the neighborhood of 0.3 mil. $

= Uncertain - but likely a box office disaster (projected return of around 0.18 times the cost)

[Criminal Lovers was released 18 August (France) and runs 96 minutes. Shooting took place in France. The film reportedly sold 40,754 tickets in France, coming to 243k $, using the average UK ticket prize of 1999 (approximately 5.97 $). The film was also released in several other markets, including New York and Los Angeles, but gross details are regrettably not to be found online. Ozon returned with Water Drops on Burning Rocks/Gouttes d'Eau sur Pierres Brûlantes (2000). Régnier returned in Everything's Fine, We're Leaving/Tout va Bien, on s'en Va (2000); Renier in The King's Daughters/Saint-Cyr (2000). Criminal Lovers is fresh at 67 % with a 6.10/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Criminal Lovers?

Saint Laurent (2014) - Bonello's overly self-confident biopic

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The psychedelic, cool poster for Bertrand Bonello's Saint Laurent

Saint Laurent is the 6th feature from French co-writer/director Bertrand Bonello (The Pornographer/Le Pornographe (2001)). It is the 2nd biopic of 2014 about French fashion designer, innovator and icon Yves Saint Laurent, who passed away in 2008. The other film, Jalil Lespert's Yves Saint Laurent (2014) is the more expensive and conventional of the two, while Saint Laurent is the wilder film, which has not been condoned by Laurent's still-living life partner Pierre Bergé. Saint Laurent was France's Oscar entry this year, which did not get nominated.

Yves Saint Laurent stuns the fashion world and keeps rising in fame and wealth in the 1960s and 70s, bringing tuxedo suits to women bodies, introducing items and styles from foreign cultures and embracing what life has to offer in sex, drink and drugs.

Saint Laurent jumps in time and shows Bergé's unrelenting loyalty and work for YSL both the company and the man throughout years of substance abuse and infidelities. The film shows Laurent very much as a human being and not a saint, so that its title may seem humorously ironic in context.
The film is probably very truthful in its portrayal of Yves Saint Laurent: He is vain, self-indulgent, fragile, difficult and gifted. The man we meet also has an almost excessive self-confidence, - undoubtedly helped along by the crowd of worshipers that always surrounded him, - but the film Saint Laurent suffers from the same characteristic, which, for this film, is fatal: It becomes protracted in the almost absurd, and seems more than overly long at its 150 minutes' playtime.
Ubiquitous Brady Corbet (Clouds of Sils Maria (2014)) has a short role, - another prestigious film that the young American has impressively gotten himself cast in, - as a US business man who tries to reason with the French fashion company without much luck. - Saint Laurent is a film it seems could have benefited from a producer's insistence on tightening up and finding the core(s) of the matter at hand. Bonillo's film too often blurs out in the vain ramblings and constructs of the title character's mind, and some will therefore label it pretentious with some justification. It is too far removed from most audience's reality to inhibit its committing the cardinal sin for a film: 
It bores.

The film is stylish, flamboyant and technically astute. It, unfortunately, isn't enough to also make it compelling.
Gaspard Ulliel (Hannibal Rising (2007)) as the master designer, Jérémie Renier (Potiche (2010)) as the insistent Bergé and Louis Garrel (The Dreamers (2003)) as the self-destructive Jacques all give dedicated performances. But the great Léa Seydoux (Blue Is the Warmest Color/La Vie d'Adèle (2013)) makes hardly an impression as Loulou de la Falaise. Aymeline Valade (Riviera (2005)) is beautiful as the striking blond Betty, who has perhaps the film's best scene near the beginning, when she walks through a club and dances before a wanting Yves Saint Laurent. Saint Laurent is very much about these small moments rather than a larger, overall arc or plot.
Another of the film's finest scenes involves Laurent setting a beautiful woman 'free' by giving her a jacket, a belt and letting her hair down. This doesn't sound like much, but it is a touching and sensual scene.
- There are a few inspired, great scenes like this in Saint Laurent, co-written with Thomas Bidegain (Rust and Bone/De Rouille et d'Os (2012)), but they are unfortunately swamped in endless scenes of debauchery and the inevitable, resulting hangovers.

Related posts:

2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
 

Léa Seydoux, Gaspard Ulliel and Aymeline Valade in Bertrand Bonello's Saint Laurent

Watch the US trailer for the film here

Budget: 8.7 mil. €
Box office: Unknown
= Uncertainty
[350k + have paid admission to see the film in France. It has been nominated for 10 César Awards (France's Oscar equivalent), winning for Best Costumes. Whether the film stirs up enough interest outside of France to become financially successful is highly dubious.]

What do you think of Saint Laurent?
If you've seen other films by Bonello, how was/were it/they?