Scene of the Crime

A crumbling family in rural France is catapulted into a world of crime and high stakes drama in Scene of the Crime, André Téchiné’s (Alice and Martin, Wild Reeds) finely tuned psychological mystery.

Thomas (Nicolaus Giraudi), a teenager suffering through his parents’ divorce, is startled on a country walk by Martin (Wadeck Sanczak), an escaped convict. The stranger demands that Thomas bring him money for train fare, but in complying, Thomas is nearly killed by Martin’s violent accomplish. In a surprising scene, Martin saves Thomas’s life.

These striking events at the beginning of Scene of the Crime set the stage for Lili, Thomas’s mother, a club owner played by a strikingly beautiful Catherine Deneuve. Trapped by both her struggles to raise Thomas and the village’s provincial ways, Lili finds herself drawn to Martin, who she knows to be a criminal. As tangled impulses grow more intense, and the implications of both Lili’s and Martin’s quests for freedom escalate, Scene of the Crime unfurls a devastating portrait of the constraints both of childhood and the conventional morality. –Kimstim