Film Review – The Skinny

When you produce features with the regularity of François Ozon, it’s inevitable that you’ll sometimes be caught idling. The crime is mine is a funny but forgettable screwball pastiche in which a high-profile murder trial sparks a media frenzy, with echoes of Roxie Hart (1942). Struggling actress Madeleine (Tereszkiewicz) sees the courtroom as the ultimate stage to showcase her talent. She falsely admits to killing a lecherous impresario and hires her also penniless roommate Pauline (Marder) as her lawyer, hoping it will be the breakthrough they both need.

Ozon pits Madeleine and Pauline against a patriarchal system, but the film’s attacks on inequality and misogyny seem like easy prey; These clever young women have little trouble outsmarting a series of bumbling men. Ozon generally keeps things light and well-paced, and he has fun with the film’s structure, repeatedly bringing up the murder in flashbacks as Madeleine gives conflicting confessions.

As always, Ozon has a sure hand with actors, and the ensemble he has put together is too The crime is mineis the strongest suit. Tereszkiewicz and Marder make an appealing pair (with Pauline’s understated sapphic longing adding a poignant touch) and Fabrice Luchini is reliably entertaining as the clueless prosecutor, but the film is comprehensively hijacked by Isabelle Huppert in the final third. She storms into the picture in full diva style, as the grand dame of the silent film era who is now seizing her chance for a comeback, and delivers an outrageously hot performance. She is clearly having fun and her sense of joy is irresistible.

Released October 18 by Parkland Pictures; Certificate 12A