French bad boy director François Ozon, who caused a stir with his controversial first feature Sitcom (1998) and his shorts A Summer Dress (1997) and See the Sea (1997), creates a dark and brooding tale of transgression and sexuality for his second feature outing. Alice (Natacha Régnier) is a bored, spoiled high schooler with a gorgeous body and a sociopathic mind. She persuades one of her suitors, the naive and trusting Luc (Jeremie Renier), to murder another suitor, the handsome, rakish Said (Salim Kechiouche). The criminal act itself, though exceedingly messy, proves to be the easy part, as disposing of the body becomes the much thornier problem. They throw the corpse in the truck of Luc's parents' car and drive to a creepy forested area in Provence. In their haste to bury the body, they lose their way. Without warm clothes or food, they wander deeper into the forest until they happen upon a seemingly deserted shack. At this point, the film's narrative suddenly mutates from its Badlands-like beginning into a bizarre, horrifying version of Hansel and Gretel. When the resident of the hut returns, he rousts them at gun point into the cellar dungeon, where to their horror they find Said's exhumed cadaver -- missing a leg. It soon becomes apparent that the hermit plans to cook and eat the couple, but not before making Luc his sex slave. Alice quickly realizes that the world does not bend to her whims. Influenced by both Luis Buñuel and Jean-Luc Godard, Ozon's wickedly baroque film is an assault on the listless bourgeoisie and an exploration of the pitch-black corners of the soul. This film was screened at the 1999 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
Review
A wicked pastiche of genre-bending and pop-culture iconography, Francois Ozon's Criminal Lovers is at once the most violent and most familiar of the French provocateur's movies. Ostensibly a bloody lovers-on-the-run story, the movie quickly reveals that it has more on its mind than mere mayhem. Ozon uses the genre as a springboard for his own thematic obsessions: the twisted dynamics of human relationships, the ubiquity of violence, repressed homosexuality, the link between sex and death. The movie charts an unpredictable journey over eerily recognizable terrain. References to other works abound: the Bonnie and Clyde scenario morphs into a twisted rendition of Hansel and Gretel. A frenetic getaway segues into an outrageous Edenic idyll. Despite the heavily symbolic material, Ozon manages to elicit scarily convincing performances from his actors. (Natacha Regnier is particularly good as the wild-eyed Alice.) More ambitious and thought-out than the similarly strident Natural Born Killers, Ozon's movie can sometimes get bogged down by his chilly academicism. Worthwhile gestures abound nonetheless, the most memorable of which is a character's hauntingly serene smile after being gunned down -- a concise embodiment of the movie's exploration of the intermingling of pleasure and pain. ~ Elbert Ventura, All Movie Guide
