Criminal Lovers (1999, François Ozon) (Patreon)

56/100

Wouldn't really call myself an Ozon fan—I'd go to bat for 8 Women, have been mixed-to-negative on almost everything else (exceptions: Under the Sand, Potiche, Young & Beautiful)—yet this was somehow the only one of his 19 features to date that I'd never seen. Tempted to file it among those that I might be too damn straight to grok, except that it's Regnier's (seemingly hetero) character whose psyche bewilders me. Alice clearly understands that Luc is gay and has decided not to care, but her decision to murder Saïd, as gradually laid out via flashbacks, at times seems motivated more by generic bloodlust than by any desire to eliminate a rival (whether for Luc's affection or her own). Can't make any sense of her erotic dream, in which she humps a tree while watching Miki Manojlovic's hermit strangle Saïd; the movie places inordinate weight on this barely-seen object of homicidal desire, and as I type that phrase I'm recalling my lukewarm response to Stranger by the Lake and wondering again whether maybe I'm just not wired for stuff like this. At the same time, though, other aspects feel similarly muddy/half-assed: Ozon makes a few explicit fairy-tale allusions—the hermit as ogre, forest animals watching Alice and Luc bone—without ever quite committing to that as an organizing principle. Guess I'll file it alongside Ricky and The New Girlfriend under Consistently Intriguing But Whaaaa? Also, and this is now becoming outright hilarious, here's yet another movie in which the final shot sees the protagonist stare directly into the camera lens, in a context that hadn't previously included any fourth-wall breaks. I had no idea how pervasive that is—the default strategy for anyone without a strong ending.