Un crime au paradis

I liked this film, which doesn't take itself as seriously as many contemporary French films do. It may never reach the USA - too bad. The humor is reminiscent of Bill Forsyth, Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam et al with a setting in dreary but beautiful French countryside instead of Scotland. A year after seeing it, many little comic details flash back...the coroner accidentally swilling the mole-killer ("taupicide") laced glass of wine by accident...the vicious wife ambling across the street threatening motorists with her umbrella...the shrewish pharmacist being convinced to sell the poison...the nasty tempered goat farmer muttering "la salope!" under his breath as milk runs out the bottom of his punctured bucket...the farmer and schoolteacher walking around oblivious to the April Fool's fish taped to their backs...

It's a french film, located in the french countryside, with that unique french feeling that stays right between drama and humor: one hour and a half that run like fresh water. Not a chef-d'oeuvre, but really pleasant. One thing to appreciate is that characters are as natural as it is in everyday life, and the plot seems to come out of a province's newspaper as well. 7 out of 10.

If you want to have a look at life in the French countryside in the seventies, this movie is for you. It's a good illustration of this forgotten world during which everything looked so naive and pain. The film is a remake of a French movie classic. It looks anachronistic compared to sophisticated French movies such as "Le pacte des loups". Its subject, its cast (most of the actors comes back from the seventies and the eighties...), its music by Pierre Bachelet, its direction... Everything looks out of time. It may be pleasant, but at the same time a useless effort to revive a movie genre which belongs to the past and which was so well made at the time. Funny, but useless.

If you know Sacha Guitry's immortal "Le Poison", this movie may seem a little disconcerting to you. It is a fairly faithful retelling of Guitry's astonishingly cynical story, but with many of the sharp corners rounded. Not a betrayal of the original, but a different, typically Jean Becker, way of telling the same story. The wife is far more developed as a character, and we are given reasons to feel sorry for her on occasion. Josiane Balasko, who plays the part, is also a first-rate actress. Braconnier, played by the equally gifted actor Jacques Villeret, is not as aggressive as Michel Simon's character; he borders on the timid. Humanity as Jean Becker sees it, in other words, and not how Sacha Guitry saw it.

If you don't know Guitry's film, you can enjoy this for what it is, a funny and yet warm comedy. If you do know Guitry's film, the écart between the two will bring out nicely what was typical of/unique to Guitry.

A strong recommendation for both movies.

Un Crime au Paradis tells the story of a fairly dimwitted farmer Jojo, and his nasty and ruthless wife Lulu, who live in complete animosity together on a farm, very ironically named "le Paradis", or "Paradise". They spend their days essentially irritating the other as much as possible, and reciprocating for the misery they've injected into each other's lives. This all comes to a head when Jojo sees on TV a lawyer who is famous for getting crime-of-passion killers acquitted since, as he says "Anyone can kill out of passion or anger".

The process by which Jojo plans the murder of his wife with the un-knowing help of this lawyer in order to get away with it is where this film gets its humour. It really is genuinely funny watching the passionate and devious lawyer get all worked up getting the story of Lulu's murder straight with Jojo, without even realising that the murder hasn't yet been committed. André Dussollier and Jacques Villeret do marvellous work in these two roles, and they back up the over-the-top script with similarly comical performances.

The film is obviously lacking in realism, but the script and the actors never take themselves too seriously; the countless jokes about the unattractiveness of Lulu is testament to this. And while the film is entertaining for the most part, it lags a bit towards the end, suffering from its lack of ingenuity in the basic storyline. It's fairly well executed in order to provide humour, but it's really nothing more than simple French escapism, and the story and pace of the film are nothing to get overly excited about.

That said, I could well recommend this film. Despite the drab setting and similarly drab budget, I'd say this is a very accessible film to a fairly wide audience, and definitely worth a look for a quick laugh. ***1/2 / *****