Ein kriminelles Paar

Ozon has cooked up an intriguing exercise. Drawing from eclectic sources ranging from Grimm's fairy tales, through Walt Disney to Bonnie and Clyde, (just to name a few), it becomes a curious amalgam.

The problem is, as interesting as it may well be, Ozon lacks the artistry to utilize all the elements towards an overall vision. He seems much more interested in the bits rather than the whole. This over indulgence with the ideas themselves weakens the effect of the film as a whole.

There's much room for interpretation (as with all fairy tales), but owing to the general lack of cohesiveness of this work, one cannot take this all too seriously, since ultimately this is not a movie worthy of serious consideration, despite it's ambitious pretensions.

Jeremie Renier has the most interesting and difficult part to play, being both sexually and morally conflicted. It's a well controlled and powerful performance.

"Criminal Lovers" has the makings of a fascinating movie but Ozon lacks the skill in weaving the elements together. It's the craft that separates the good from the great film makers.

Story of love and death, with some American thriller sparkles and the flavor of Ozon, "Amants criminels" is trip in a dark universe, with strange cages and shadows of fears.

In same aspects, it is a new adaptation of "Dangerous Liaisons". Also, it is a adaptations of brothers Grimm tales. But important are not the images, rabbits or forest man , the murder or the rats. It is only a room of Francois Ozon universe and relevant is the desire of director to discover the limits of a situation. Not the ways but the purpose.

The evil girl for the other is basic object, the homoerotic scenes, the strange land, the race different, the games and the end, the cries and forms of affection are pieces of an interesting puzzle in which the purpose may be the catharsis.

A cruel beautiful film. Cold, aggressive, nostalgic, sad and strange. A film about the ways of escape. And about their fragile substance.

What's going on? How does this film only have an average of 6.3? The pacing is excellent, each nuance and revelation is revealed subtly, but it doesn't let up with it's consistent harshness.

I love these movies that demonstrate human characteristics through a harsh exaggerated situation.

The rather graphic sex scene at the end, juxtaposed with the swat team was great, as was the very last shot of the boy.

Go Ozon!

In 1999, two very different horror films were unleashed onto audiences. Both were postmodern takes on contemporary folklore. Both involved young people getting lost in the woods. Both drew heavily from folktales by the Brothers Grimm. Both were products of their time and thus reflect their respective society's anxieties. Both have notoriously bleak endings. Both were far cries from what the multiplexes were offering. Both were influential in spawning two new modes of storytelling. Yet The Blair Witch Project was heavily marketed as a horror film and remains a landmark in the found footage genre while Criminal Lovers stayed mostly in arthouse theaters due to its frank sexuality as well as its refusal to stay within genre conventions. As a result, Criminal Lovers never got proper attention that it deserves in forming French New Extermity's roots.

Honestly, the film feels what would happen if you spliced in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre halfway through Badlands. This isn't the only cinematic influence that Criminal Lovers borrows from to tell its certified messed-up tale of doomed lovers running from the law. Echoes of The Night Of The Hunter and Salo are present in the film as the couple go down a river in a boat before being captured by a sadistic man in the woods. Every torturous taboo imaginable is broken to the point that you realize that Hansel and Gretel got off easy compared to what Alice and Luc suffer through.

That's where the film's strengths lie in its willingness to play with genre conventions and to break the boundaries of good taste. One minute, it's a high school melodrama with murder thrown in for good measure; the next minute, it's a subliminal torture porn that would make Eli Roth run away in complete terror. I won't spoil the horrors but they gave this hardened viewer pause in disbelief.

This gives Criminal Lovers a much more transgressive artistry than Blair Witch Project ever could- it's a fractured fairy tale as envisioned by a hellish-but-dreamlike collaboration between the Marquis De Sade and Jean-Luc Godard. Even better, you get two fantastic performances from both Natacha Regnier and Jeremie Renier that supply the film with a desperate rawness that's only matched by the young people suffering in Larry Clark's films.

one of Francois Ozon films. this is the most inspired definition for the embroidery of love, appearances, eroticism and meet with a classic fairy tale in new adaptation. a film who ignores taboos and who has the right seduction tools for impress. a couple, a murder and a meet. and the atmosphere who reminds a lot of similar stories but defines a great thriller. a film who has many virtue but not the status of comfortable film.the lead trait - science of Ozon to create fascinating games , like spider web, for define every day aspects of society.the other significant detail - the meet with Predrag Manojlovic, one of familiar figures from the films of Kusturica, here performing one of characters who, for a part from us, reminds large slices from childhood.