Review of Love Is the Perfect Crime

Three quarters of the way through the film, I decided that everyone had misunderstood it and the filmmakers had their tongues firmly in their collective cheek. And therein lies the problem. I was wrong, as a late twist reveals. This film wants to be taken seriously. That tonal inconsistency is a deal breaker. Matthieu Almeric is miscast and everyone else, even the wonderful Sarah Forestier, for the most part wasted. Only Maiwen gets to have some fun with her character. For most of its running time it plays like a very subtle comedy, a kind of "Scream XX" for the psychological thriller genre, with a cast of characters straight out of a cheap melodrama. The philandering professor, his incestuous sister, the endless nubile students and the drop-dead gorgeous bereaved mother. Phillipe Djian, who wrote the novel on which this screenplay is based, also wrote Betty Blue, the novel. That's relevant because Betty Blue the movie is a lot better than Betty Blue the novel. The novel reads like a bad teenage fantasy. That film is in most ways true to the book but it succeeds because it sets the right tone from the start and is perfectly cast. Love is the Perfect Crime has neither advantage, the director simply not understanding the subject matter. I read recently that Paul Verhoeven is planning to adapt a Djian novel. Now that might be worth seeing.