Criminal Lovers on DVD (1999)

A Sunday afternoon filler

Jan from London [Highly rated reviewer] , 11/04/2004

If you are bored of watching soap omnibuses on a Sunday afternoon, then you won't go too far wrong with this diverting teen romp.

Alice (a manipulatuve minx if ever there was one) convinces her boyfriend (the easily-led Luc) that they have to kill a school mate and then dump the body, which they duly do. A film told in flash backs then goes on to explore the motives/characters of both Alice and Luc, and this is where the film works. Alice is domineering and obviously unhinged while Luc is the puppy dog who will do anything to gain her approval - though the approval is really a way for Luc to get a handle on his sexuality.

The only other character in the film is the oh-so-creepy woodsman, enough to make any person's skin crawl. There are some sado-masochistic overtones in the wood shed, which you will have to watch - not wanting to give important bits away.

Anyway, not the best film in the world, and definitely not the worst. It passes the time without taxing the brain.

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Criminal Lovers

SAI81 from Tonbridge [Highly rated reviewer] , 19/08/2005

Francois Ozon is quite possibly the most interesting director working in France. He is prolific, hard to pin down to a genre and has never made a film that isn't worth watching. Criminal Lovers does pretty much what it says on the tin. Young lovers Alice (Regnier) and Luc (Renier) are on the run. Luc has murdered a classmate at Alice's urging. They hide in the woods having buried their victim but when they rob a house for some food they are taken hostage by a woodsman (Kechiouche) who has seen the burial, dug up the body and begins to enact his own twisted punishment. If you like nice films about nice people who have fun adventures and learn some heartwarming life lessons you are in the wrong place (Bye Mum). On the face of it niether of the main characters is sympathetic. Alice in particular becomes more and more loathsome as the film goes on. Her manipulation of Luc is clever and scary because it seems plausible. Regnier (outstanding in the brilliant The Dreamlife of Angels) is exceptional, by turns seductive, mad and diabolically clever but her greatest achievement is to make us sorry about what happens in the films closing seconds. This is also down to Kechiouche, who actually manages to be even more reprehensible than Regnier's character. The only remotely likeable person is Luc. He may be the one who kills the victm that he and Alice bury but he is manipulated by her into doing it and we begin to have sympathy for him as we see both that and what the Woodsman puts him through. Though I singled out Regnier for praise, and she deserves it, all three central performances are excellent, a good thing because there are few other people in the film. Visually this is a down and dirty film, paricularly within the cabin there is a grimy authenticity to Ozon's imagery (though it is clearly a film heavy on design). Though short the film never feels in a hurry, it simply tells a compact story and tells it well. Criminal Lovers, clearly, isn't for everyone but it is an interesting and provocative character piece and worth seeing as an introduction to the man who is, perhaps, Europe's best working director.

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Not quite the full centime

A customer from Scotland , 02/03/2005

Not an easy or pleasant film to watch, 'Criminal Lovers' doesn't quite make it: we don't quite see why the oh-so-easily-led Luc kills in such a barbaric way; Alice & Luc's sentimentality towards animals is meant as a counter-point, but it simply seems to be odd; the animals around them in the love scene near the end look like something out of Monty Python; and the coincidence of meeting up with the unhinged woodsman is not explained at all.

Alice's character works: we really do see why and how she is well and truly not the full centime, but the Director doesn't have her centre-stage, as it were: he wants to explore the truly deviant relationship between Luc and the woodsman.

But even the woodsman is a cardboard cut-out nasty guy and where this film falls down (in comparison, say, to 'The Blair Witch Project') is that it doesn't leave enough to our imaginations, but then again it raises questions it doesn't answer, such as 'What is this guy doing there anyway?' and 'Is Luc really gay?' It's as if they couldn't decide if they were making a teen-angst slash-fest or a Mike Leigh-style reality movie.

Personally I find this kind of French film very frustrating, unlike the cheap nonsense that usually comes out of America. With Hollywood, you know better than to expect depth; with serious French cinema you want questions answered and characters explored fully, and you don't get this here.

'Criminal Lovers' is shocking in parts and painful too, but really not that good. Even the ending left me wondering whether Luc would get away with it, but that's another story...

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Flat

A customer from Salisbury, England , 26/06/2005

There were moments in this movie where despite murder, rape and cannibalism I found myself talking in funny voices in my head and counting leaves on the tree. It didn't engage one brain cell let alone an emotion. I would say that the movie is trying to ape American films such as True Romance, where the nihilism of modern life informs the brutality of the characters' lives. If it is, then it fell very short of that intent. However, it was nice to see that the girl got held in the cellar for once while the boy got sexually abused. Times are a changing.

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Not quite the full centime

A customer from Scotland , 02/03/2005

Not an easy or pleasant film to watch, 'Criminal Lovers' doesn't quite make it: we don't quite see why the oh-so-easily-led Luc kills in such a barbaric way; Alice & Luc's sentimentality towards animals is meant as a counter-point, but it simply seems to be odd; the animals around them in the love scene near the end look like something out of Monty Python; and the coincidence of meeting up with the unhinged woodsman is not explained at all.

Alice's character works: we really do see why and how she is well and truly not the full centime, but the Director doesn't have her centre-stage, as it were: he wants to explore the truly deviant relationship between Luc and the woodsman.

But even the woodsman is a cardboard cut-out nasty guy and where this film falls down (in comparison, say, to 'The Blair Witch Project') is that it doesn't leave enough to our imaginations, but then again it raises questions it doesn't answer, such as 'What is this guy doing there anyway?' and 'Is Luc really gay?' It's as if they couldn't decide if they were making a teen-angst slash-fest or a Mike Leigh-style reality movie.

Personally I find this kind of French film very frustrating, unlike the cheap nonsense that usually comes out of America. With Hollywood, you know better than to expect depth; with serious French cinema you want questions answered and characters explored fully, and you don't get this here.

'Criminal Lovers' is shocking in parts and painful too, but really not that good. Even the ending left me wondering whether Luc would get away with it, but that's another story...

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A Sunday afternoon filler

Jan from London [Highly rated reviewer] , 11/04/2004

If you are bored of watching soap omnibuses on a Sunday afternoon, then you won't go too far wrong with this diverting teen romp.

Alice (a manipulatuve minx if ever there was one) convinces her boyfriend (the easily-led Luc) that they have to kill a school mate and then dump the body, which they duly do. A film told in flash backs then goes on to explore the motives/characters of both Alice and Luc, and this is where the film works. Alice is domineering and obviously unhinged while Luc is the puppy dog who will do anything to gain her approval - though the approval is really a way for Luc to get a handle on his sexuality.

The only other character in the film is the oh-so-creepy woodsman, enough to make any person's skin crawl. There are some sado-masochistic overtones in the wood shed, which you will have to watch - not wanting to give important bits away.

Anyway, not the best film in the world, and definitely not the worst. It passes the time without taxing the brain.

Read all highest rated reviews