Court of tabloid history – Weekend
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In the Russian box office – “My Crime”, a new film by Francois Ozon, who returned to the burlesque genre so dear to his heart and brilliantly coped with the task of ridiculing the holy of holies of modern Western society – feminism and the MeToo movement generated by this progressive ideology. And this irony is full of tenderness.
Mine Crime is a rather scrupulous adaptation of the tabloid play of the same name by Georges Bert and Louis Verneuil, popular Parisian playwrights whose careers flourished in the troubling thirties. The aesthetics of the boulevard theater has twice already inspired Ozon, who is famous for his fantastic capacity for work – not a year without a film – for box office hits of high artistic merit. This, of course, is about 8 Women and The Housewife, popularly beloved films with legendary casts – from scene veterans like Danielle Darrieux to young stars Virginie Ledoyen and Ludivine Sagnier, with Catherine Deneuve and Fanny Ardant as an unconditional bond.
In “My Crime” too closely from celebrities, Isabelle Huppert and André Dussolier, Dani Boon and Fabrice Luchini perform in secondary and extremely characteristic roles, but the main roles are given to very young actresses Nadia Tereshkevich and Rebecca Marder. Ozon always had an impeccable flair for new faces, under his leadership quickly becoming the faces of a generation. It is not surprising that Tereshkevich, after the release of “My Crime”, received “Cesar” as the main hope of French cinema for the nostalgic film by Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi from the Cannes competition “Almond Trees”, and Rebecca Marder had the honor to embody on the screen not just anyone, but Simone Weil in the exemplary biopic Simone. In Ozon, they portray almost themselves – Madeleine and Pauline, two emancipes, each vainly trying to succeed in their own field: Madeleine dreams of the stage of the Comedie Francaise, Pauline – of a career as a lawyer. But the world, alas, is ruled by men, entirely misogynists and scoundrels. At the next audition with the famous producer, who invited her to his luxurious villa in Neuilly, Madeleine is subjected to the most severe harassment, runs away in tears – to complain to her friend and fiancé, who, by the way, is in no hurry to ask for her hand and heart because of her poor origin. Meanwhile, the producer is found dead, and next to him is an elegant ladies’ revolver. Suspicion naturally falls on Madeleine. Pauline decides to help her friend and make her jury debut. This is where the fun begins.
A crime drama that logically flows into a procedural rare for French cinema, Ozon gladly turns into a theater of the absurd, and the object of evil irony is not so much patriarchy – what to take from it, it is mired in its own vices and, by all accounts, is doomed – but a tribe young, unfamiliar. In France, the sensational MeToo movement, the legitimate victims of which many industry bosses fell, received the not very euphonious name Balance ton porc, which in Russian means “inform on your pig.” As a result, the French professional milieu suffered a huge reputational damage, and if overseas the feminist reconquista, having achieved almost all of its goals, is now rather resting on its laurels, in the Fifth Republic the struggle of women for the rights due to them is only gaining momentum. Ozone partially suffered from feminists back in 2013 (after the release of Young and Beautiful, the director naively stated in an interview that any woman is a prostitute at heart), over the years he understood and realized, and in 2023 he decided carefully and at the same time witty speak out on a sensitive topic. In “My Crime”, the heroines, who long to be freed from the oppression of the opposite sex once and for all, do not compete for the status of a new victim, as is customary today, but, on the contrary, want to be in the dock. After all, passion and self-defense are the motives most often recognized by the impressionable public and the special effects-hungry press as extenuating circumstances. Sincere confession leads to justification. The justification is followed by recognition of a different kind, namely, career growth.
Ozone effortlessly exposes both the majority, and the minorities, and the performance, and the society contemplating it, and life, and death, which, in principle, is the same vulgar joke. It is easy to suspect the director of the manipulation of meanings, typical of retrogrades clinging to the coffin, but Ozone easily gets out of a delicate situation. Who is he laughing at? Is it over a bright future? No, because his women climb over the corpses not in the direction of the spotlights, but still on the barricades. Be that as it may, we will consider that “My Crime” is an example of a rare and, most importantly, masterfully performed work in which cynicism is in the service of idealism. And if it’s the other way around, that’s okay too. And very, very funny.
In theaters from June 22
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