If you go down to the woods today you're in for a big surprise. But not as
big as the one that awaits the heroes of this twisted modern fairy-tale from
quirky French filmmaker François Ozon.
If you first encountered Ozon through his camp musical whodunnit "Eight
Women", this dark little curio - filmed in 1999 - may prove disconcerting. But then Ozon is nothing if not eclectic, as anyone who saw black comedy "Sitcom" or Fassbinder homage "Water Drops On
Burning Rocks" will attest.
At a small provincial high school, conniving sexpot Alice (Natacha Régnier)
persuades her gullible young lover Luc (Jérémie Rénier) to murder classmate
Saïd (Salim Kechiouche), whom she claims raped her.
Having offed the lad in the locker room, the couple drive into the forest to
dispose of the body. But things go pear-shaped when the pair get lost on their way back to the car.
Help arrives in the form of a hairy hermit (Miki Manojlovic) who invites them back to his cabin. But this grim fable takes a Grimm turn when he locks the youngsters in his cellar, saying he intends to fatten them up before
eating them...
Part Hansel and Gretel, part "Blair Witch Project", "Criminal Lovers" is an unsettling, subversive thriller that combines sadism, cannibalism, and homoeroticism to increasingly delirious effect.
Quite who it's aimed at is anyone's guess, but it certainly cements Ozon's
status as one of France's most unpredictable young auteurs.
Criminal Lovers (2003)
