It's the French Cinepanorama in Hong Kong. I saw my second film last night: L'amour est un crime parfait (2013) directed by the brothers Arnaud Larrieu and Jean-Marie Larrieu, originally written by Philippe Djian and adapted for the cinema by him and featuring Mathieu Amalric as Marc, Maïwenn as Anna, Karin Viard as Marianne. The original story was taken from Dijan's Incidences. Dijan already had a number of novels behind him like Bleu comme L'enfer (1986), 37.2 degré le matin (1986), Ne fais pas ça! (2004), Inpardonables (2011) and Krocodil (2013) some of which had already been adapted for films.
This is also a film about love. From the Hong Kong perspective, what else to expect? But again, we're in for a surprise. The film starts with a long track showing a treacherous winding mountain path all covered with snow, with the rugged and jagged surfaces of roughly hewn limestone rock on one side, the irregular shape of snow upon the rubbles at the side of a precipice on the other side, from the perspective of a camera probably placed at the level of the wheels and as disclosed by a car's dim headlights: a little skidding and a fault in the brake system could spell disaster. Perhaps a subtle hint of what we're to expect? Next we're shown a well endowed teenage girl next to the driver's seat and the voice of what must be a male driver asking if she'd be missed by her parents to which she said there'd be absolutely no problem. She didn't waste any time once they're inside the bedroom of a stone and log cabin at the side of high mountain amidst the snow, all lined with books on the walls. The following morning, the girl was mysteriously dead in his bed, maybe from drug overdose? We weren't given any explanation. We next see Marc in the morning coming down from a spot close to the top of a deep ravine, being greeted by a neighbor asking him what he was doing so high up in the mountain snow so early in the morning. He said he was meditating. Then we see him in a room in an ultra modern glass and steel structure close to the entrance with natural light streaming in from the outside. It was the University of Lausanne in the French/Swiss Alps. Behind him was a huge electronic screen and on the other side a row of some 20 students on a long arc-shaped table, mostly fashionably dressed girls. He was giving them a literary writing assignment and the student are given one hour to turn in their work. He went out to have a cigarette. But soon a fashionably dressed lady in early 40's arrived (Anna). She asked to see him. She said she was the mother of Barbara who heard Barbara, her precocious step-daughter talking about him a lot and now she hadn't a clue as to where she could have gone, she having been missing for days. She appeared distraught, her hair all messy etc. Then from time to time, she re-appeared at the university campus trying desperately to have some clues on the whereabouts of Barbara whose writing she said she had read. Marc commented that she was one of his best students. Then she began to ramble about her own life and then catching herself doing so, told Marc that she did not know what she was doing and just felt like talking to someone. She says that her husband, a military man is sent to Mali for some action and she felt bored. And then, when Marc went to the open air car park preparing to go home, he found her there waiting for him. She said she had lost her car key and asked if he could give her a ride. He hesitated a bit but let her in. Once inside, she looked at him with longings in her eyes. A relation developed.
In the meantime, another teenage student Sara Forestier who had been paying extra-academic interest in the literature professor asked for private tuition. She came from a rich and powerful family and constantly pestered Marc to have an affair with her but Marc resisted and when finally he was forced to promise to meet him 5 minutes later in his car and she was waiting for his signal to come out and Marc was just about to take her in, he saw his sister Marianne, who was the university librarian coming out and drove off. Then he got calls from Sara calling him all kinds of insulting names and the next, his superior Richard told him his course would be cut and advised Marc to keep his distance with his students but Richard defended him at a university meeting and a career crisis was averted. But when he got out from his chalet preparing to go to his class in the morning, he was beaten up by three masked men right outside its door.Then the faculty had a party. Sara was there and again pestered Marc. She simply wouldn't let go and managed to force one kiss from him. To get her off his back, he promised to give her private lessons. But when he got to her house, she was trying to seduce him again. When he was on his way home, his nose was bleeding and he got flagged down by a traffic policeman during a traffic jam and was badly treated. Next we see him driving home. When he arrived, we see the policeman's helmet on the floor of his car. He lifted him up, dragged up the snowy mountain and pushed him down but he got stuck at the bottom of a tree. So he got down to give it another push but discovered to his surprise the body of Barbara still stuck at the bottom of another tree! He gave it another shove and returned home with blood all over his face and when questioned by Marianne how he got into that state, he invented a story about falling.
In the meantime, Richard had taken a fancy to Marianne, despite Marc's warning to him to keep away from her and was beginning to be intimate with her, doing exactly what he told Marianne he did not want to see in their chalet: Richard singing in his shower and having breakfast with them. Then when he was with Anna, he got a cell phone message from Sara telling him that Anna was a cop. He was surprised and when he checked her handbag, there was a gun! They were intimate for the last time. He told her that when her sister was 10 and he 11, he set fire to their house when his own father was ill-treating his mother and his sister and his mother would do nothing to stop him and he promised his sister that he would look after her the whole of her life and when Anna said she got out to wait for him in the boat in which she would elope with him and he looked outside the window, he saw several policemen on a special task force on the roof of the house with rifles in their hands. He stopped the gas fire and allow the gas to run. And he got out a notepad and wrote "L'amour est un crime parfait". He lit his last cigarette. There was a terrific explosion. The film ends.
I like the way the director presented his story and the symbolism he uses: the cold dark mountain with perfectly white snow on top against the warm fire lit chalet harboring an incestuous relationship between brother and sister, the warmth of wood of his chalet in yellow light against the cold white glass and steel structure of the university building, the cold dark and treacherous road perched between rugged mountain side and a deep ravine, the ambiguous and tortuous relationship of Marc first with Barbara and then with her purported step-mother Anna and the merciless directness of Sara, the overwhelming but silent power of the snow-capped mountains with its firs and pines and puniness of man in such surroundings: light and darkness and the complicated relationship between life and , death, passion and rationality, between literature and life. Is life stranger than fiction or the other way round?
It's an excellent but macabre film about forbidden desires, very well acted, with excellent photography and music and full of surprises and suspense and keeps you guessing what would happen next till the very end. And yet when the end came, we see how inevitable everything must have been! The film makes us wonder: what exactly is love? Does it bestialize us or does it ennoble us? Is it fantasy or is it reaL? Is it of the mind? Or is it just passion? Does love require justification or is it its own justification? Whatever the answer may be, unfortunately I couldn't find any trailers for this film.
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