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Le lieu du crime (1986) More at IMDbPro »

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8 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Compelling, complex and worthy., 26 August 2001
Author: (iamanatullah@yahoo.com) from Davis

I've only seen three of Andre Techine's films ("Rendez-Vous," "Scene of the Crime," and "Wild Reeds") but after watching "Wild Reeds" I knew I'd have to watch everything else he'd ever made, for now I was a life-long fan.

"Scene of the Crime" has many of the virtues of "Wild Reeds,"--a film that will inhabit you for weeks after you've seen it--chief among them Techine's intelligence and sensitive handling of character and flair for melodrama. If Thomas Hardy were alive today, he'd probably be Techine's script-writer.

The film's two concerns are repression and freedom. Thomas--a sullen angry 13 year old--and Lili--his dreamy, distractedly neurotic mother-- undergo several collisions and unions with a young escaped convict and his friends: they are left to pick up the pieces and reconfigure their lives. Both mother and son are bound by a repressions whose roots are in family, community and religion. And each conflict with others binds them like a rope, so that Thomas futilely lashes out in anger while Lili attempts to lose (and in doing so) find herself with an act of impulsive negation. We could trace much of the repression toward the less likable characters--other criminals or family members--but doing so is futile. Techine understands what Renoir meant when said "everyone has his reasons," and so this film isn't about the difficulty of living with other people, but the difficulty of living in this universe.

Techine has often been called a "novelistic" director; meaning he takes you deep inside his characters' thoughts and motivations. This doesn't involve voiceover, just Techine's direction and the melodramatic plots that force their characters into confrontations ordained by the strength of their passions. Melodrama asks the most of its characters; requires them to feel and undergo all they can. It's numerous coincidences, and run-ins can seem like an amplified version of life's randomness and havoc. Techine's approach involves an analytical acceptance of melodrama's approach to narrative; a willing and measured use of its conventions, resulting in narratives that often seem more vivid than reality and paradoxically more truthful and satisfying. The emotions unearthed are more intense than those brought out by reality, but possess the inner truth of reality.

His technique is not flashy, attention-getting or hyper-formalistic: which means it works discreetly and extremely well. There is an ever-present analytical attention to the natural (and un-) surroundings that surround his characters, along with an intense intimacy toward them. He follows very few rules, and mixes quick cutting with measured long takes and a mobile camera. All this allows us to move back and forth and toward and away from his characters, sympathizing with them in close-up one moment, then judging at a detached angle or pan to another character's reaction. It is a wonderfully effective method, and constantly reminds us of each character's motivations (as do the relentless melodramatics.)

Techine's films aren't formally difficult, but if you lose track at one point it's hard to catch up, because his characters will have accumulated even more motivations and reactions by then. The intense sensitivity of his style allows us to accurately register each character's accumulating layer of emotions, which continually enlarge their motivations. To lose track of that accumulative process is probably what happened to Roger Ebert, who wrote the film should have been a gangster drama made in 1939, so that the melodramatic plot would seem more acceptable and Techine's moments of psychological insights wouldn't seem so "out of place." (The film IS primarily flawed in the sketchiness of the convict's lover and the overly-rushed pace of the climactic sequence.)He doesn't consider that the melodrama of the plot is precisely what allows for those moments of psychological insight. And desire for the film to be an old-fashioned crime noir seems inexplicable, when this is obviously a family drama where crime serves to provoke a shake-up and re-evaluation of family relations and the life-directions the characters have chosen. At the end of "Scene of the Crime" we're not sure whether Thomas and Lili have either recovered or damaged forever. And as Lili hauntingly remarks, after a certain point, losing and finding yourself may be the same process.

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8 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Lacks focus, but interesting, 14 May 2002
Author: Dennis Littrell (dalittrell@yahoo.com) from SoCal

The title is a bit misleading since Le lieu du crime is not a noir thriller or a mystery. It is a relationships movie with psychological undertones. Director André Téchiné is especially drawn to the exploration of family affairs featuring naturalistic depictions of human sexuality. For example see Ma Saison Préférée (1993), also starring Catherine Deneuve, in which the central tension, maintained for decades, is that of a brother's unrequited desire for his older sister. Téchiné is very good at exploring taboo situations without leaving us with a sense of the perverse, and he is able to hint at a deeper, non-expressed sexuality behind ordinary life.

Here Catherine Deneuve stars as Lili Ravenel, who has a 13-year-old son, Thomas (Nicolas Giraudi), who is not doing well at school, a father who no longer cares about people at all, including members of his own family, and a mother who is emotionally close and distant by turns. Lili is estranged from her husband, a man she no longer loves, if ever she did. She is a woman of a certain age who finds diversion in managing a night club. Thus we have the familiar psychology of the bored middle class woman who, we know, will be drawn irresistibly to the excitement of an outsider. Directors who find themselves in the enviable position of directing the beautiful, cool and stately Deneuve seem themselves irresistibly drawn to showing her in compromised situations. I'm thinking of Belle de Jour (1967) and Mississippi Mermaid (1969), directed respectively by Luis Buñuel and Francois Truffaut. In the former Deneuve is a day-tripping prostitute and in the latter she is a criminal on the run. For some odd reason there is something deeply moving about seeing Deneuve give into her baser nature. (I think.)

Anyway, here she does indeed give herself to the rough young man who has killed his companion, and she does so without a hint of regret or lingering doubt. Incidentally in Téchiné's Ma Saison Préférée, mentioned above, there is a scene in which a young intern has his way with Deneuve using much the same approach that Wadeck Stanczack, who plays Martin, an escaped con, employs here. That Lili's sexuality is aroused by his crude demand is the psychology that Téchiné wants to concentrate on; but because one of the weaknesses of his movie is a lack of focus, the impact of her desire is not as strongly felt as it might be. For a most striking and stunning exploration of this theme see Vittoria De Sica's unforgettable The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1971).

Another weakness of this movie is some unconvincing action and dialogue in places. The opening scene in which Thomas is threatened by Martin who demands money to help him escape is a case in point. Martin's threats seem mild and ineffective. One wonders why Thomas is compelled to return. I also wonder about the boy's response to seeing his mother in bed with Martin. His first reaction is to say, "He will kill you!" and then later he asks his father, "Is that love?", which doesn't seem like something a 13-year-old would say. A six-year-old, maybe. Also a puzzle is why Claire Nebout, who is interesting as Alice, the girl involved with the two escapees, stops her car in the rain to pick up Thomas only to throw him out a few minutes later. Why did she stop at all? As the scene was shot he seemed to be in the middle of the road, so she couldn't avoid him, but considering that it was dark and it was raining, I don't think that would happen. At any rate, the purpose of the scene is to show that Thomas, like his mother, is starved for excitement, begging Alice to take him with her.

My favorite Téchiné movie is Rendez-Vous (1985) starring a very young and vital Juilette Binoche, who is clearly adored by the director. It is, like this movie, uneven in places, but Binoche is incredibly sexy and captivating. If you are a Binoche fan, see it. You will experience a side of her not shown in her American movies.

By the way, when this was filmed Deneuve was about 43-years-old and had already appeared in at least 67 films. She is the kind of woman who grows more beautiful as she grows older. I found her much more attractive here than when I first saw her in the celebrated The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), released when she was 21.

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1 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Good girl's deliverance, 24 September 2002

Author: eva25at from Vienna, Austria

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

***possible spoilers***

Sometimes negative reviews can be quite useful: after having read the comments of Roger Ebert and the Washington Post, I kept my expectations low - and enjoyed this film.

Contrary to my expectations, this little boy, Thomas (Nicolas Giraudi) is not some child-monster, just the usual brat who suffers under the divorce of his parents and likes to play them off against each other. Lili Ravenel (Catherine Deneuve), his indulgent mother, loves him so foolishly, that he exploits her yielding attitude to full advantage.

Always obedient to her parents, dutiful Lili married Maurice (Victor Lanoux) against her better judgment and now has to endure their reproach because she dared to leave him.

As working mother she is living with a permanent bad conscience: Is she neglecting her motherly duties? Maurice thinks so: A woman who works in a night-club and comes home only at 6 in the morning is an unfit mother. Every time Thomas lies or steals or is in danger of being kicked out of his monastic school, he threatens to remove the care and custody of her son from her. And so, poor submissive Lili has to perform her marital duties even after the divorce - while Maurice screens old home-movies of their domestic happiness long past and gone.

Due to this film's bizarre plot-line, Lili finds a soul-mate - in a convict, of all people. His obedience toward a hardened criminal has brought Martin (Wladeck Stanczak) to prison, escape and murder. Alice, a female accomplice is on her way, their destination is Spain. But, after his cell-mate tried to strangle Thomas ("It's nothing, you will fall asleep, it's nothing..."), after having squeezed money out of him, Martin draws his knife...

His priest does not believe Thomas' incredible story and nearly bars him from his first communion, but the suspicions of his mother are confirmed when she witnesses the efforts of Martin and Alice to hide the corpse on a graveyard.

The celebration in honor of the holy communion - cherries, croque-bouche, lovingly prepared by grandmother (Danielle Darrieux) - takes a non too harmonious course, Thomas wishing an atomic bomb would destroy his school, grandpa wishing to crush his family like flies...

After Thomas is back to his boarding school, Lili is ripe for a helter-skelter escape with Martin. During a stormy night, Thomas elopes, only to surprise Mom and her new lover in flagranti. Alice too, is somewhere around here, with her gun...

What could have been a suspenseful thriller or a glamorous melodrama turns out to be just an unfulfilled promise. Don't even try to follow the motivations of some of the characters. Director Andre Techine was obviously too lazy to fill the holes in the plot. Nicolas Giraudi is either good type-casting - morose children are not so rare - or, what I suspect, an amateur with no acting ability. Never heard of Wladeck Stanczak? Guess why. The critic of the Washington Post liked the view of the southwest countryside - well, it's dull, cloudy and raining most of the time. It's depressing to see Deneuve in those surroundings.

Surprisingly enough, this film gets more watchable near the end. While Maurice won't suffer her talking to her son again, her permits her to watch him secretly, from behind a curtain - home-movies in the background, again. Nothing conveys the impression that he is missing her. She is smiling, the sun is shining and the music becomes quite cheerful as the car from the prison drives her away...

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