Isabelle works under Christine. They think alike. They are quite different. They might be lovers. But Christine takes credit for Isabelle’s brilliant ideas. A struggle ensues between these two attractive and powerful women, the two top executives in the French office of an American multinational. Christine has the upper hand and no mercy. Humiliated and nearly destroyed, Isabelle begins to plot her revenge. Imaginative and thorough, calculating and exact, Isabelle makes an outstanding murderer. Every strange, seemingly haphazard thing she does – including a sudden drug dependence and wandering aimless in the rain – is part of her plan to kill. And get away with it. –The Film Catalogue
The French director Alain Corneau made 16 films in a variety of genres, from Série Noire, the bleak, sordid 1979 drama that featured a compelling performance by Patrick Dewaere as a door to door salesman looking for redemption in the wrong places, to Crime D’Amour [Love Crime], the psychological thriller starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Ludivine Sagnier, which opened in French cinemas to critical acclaim a fortnight before his death from lung cancer. “He was a cinema great,” Scott Thomas said, “an absolutely adorable, funny and sharp-witted man.” Corneau was best known internationally for Tous Les Matins Du Monde (All The Mornings Of The World), a delicate, painterly film about the relationship between the Versailles court composer Marin Marais – Gérard Depardieu and his son Guillaume – and his aesthetic teacher Jean de Sainte-Colombe, played by the ever-excellent Jean-Pierre Marielle. First screened at the end of 1991, Tous Les Matins became a word-of-mouth success with over two million… read more
Another example where good performances allow a film to hold your interest,despite being slow moving,predictable and a bit improbable. Looks like the writers were eager to have a murder to do just that.
The premise has potential, but the film is for the most part bland, boring, and predictable. I think Brian De Palma will inject some much-needed personality into his remake.
The director talks about his new movie, home video cinephilia, working with cinema’s greatest composers, and more.
Le Monde and other French news outlets are reporting that Alain Corneau has succumbed to cancer at the age of 67. Just last week, Jordan
Ruthless executive Christine brings on Isabelle as her assistant, and she takes delight in toying with the young woman’s innocence. But when the protégé’s ideas become tempting enough for Christine… read review
The thing with the French is that they do everything so well. In fact, I’m fairly sure that they could turn a documentary about thumbtacks into a film that Delon would have sold his soul to star in… read review