ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel, The Good, the Bad and the Verdict and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

Official synopsis: Paris in the 1930s. Struggling actress Madeleine and her best friend Pauline, an unemployed lawyer, live in debt in a cramped flat. Opportunity knocks after a lascivious theatrical producer who made an inappropriate advance towards Madeleine turns up dead. Adapted from a 1934 play by Georges Berr and Louis Verneuil and featuring a murder’s row of a supporting cast.

Every so often, a film comes along that truly reminds me of why I love a certain genre of movies, and even film in general. Director François Ozon’s French comedy The Crime Is Mine (Mon Crime) is just such a work, for both cases. 

The dazzling performances! The witty dialogue! The gorgeous costumes! The sumptuous set design! Director/co-writer Ozon, his co-writer Philippe Piazzo (original playwright Georges Berr also receives a credit), and his cast and crew nail virtually every aspect of creating what is to me a near-perfect film. 

Madeleine (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) is a young actress hoping for her big break. A famous producer tries the casting couch approach with her and is found murdered shortly after her visit. Thankfully, her friend and roommate Pauline (Rebecca Marder) is a budding lawyer who takes on Madeleine’s court case when the latter is accused of the killing. Though innocent, Madeleine pleads guilty for the publicity. The trial becomes a public sensation followed closely by tabloids on each side of the accused. Not much has changed since Berr’s and Louis Verneuil’s play premiered in 1934, so the theme of women trying to stand up to men in power is still highly relevant.

Tereszkiewicz and Marder are delightful in their lead roles. The Crime Is Mine boasts subplots aplenty, and the supporting players bringing the many interesting characters to cinematic life are all fantastic, though too numerous to mention everyone here. Isabelle Huppert as scheming actress Odette Chaumette, Danny Boon as a kind supporter of Madeleine’s, and Fabrice Luchini as a bumbling judge are three of the main supporting performers.

The pacing of this fun farce is frenetic, and Ozon works in social themes that linger despite the decades that have passed since the play and screen adaptations on which this film is based. The Crime Is Mine is a blast, a respectful throwback to golden age comedies.

The Crime Is Mine, from Music Box Films, is currently screening on OVID. For more information, visit https://www.ovid.tv/.