Crime d'amour 2010

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: I'm already looking for an excuse to see it again. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: It is interesting and ingenious, even if some of the kinky, queasy fascination that had been so intoxicating in the earlier scenes ebbs away. Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: Love Crime soon plummets into a flashback-laden mess, a shame since it was marginally stronger as a psychosexual game of dominance. Read more

John Anderson, Wall Street Journal: A delicious thriller that gets under the skin a la "All About Eve," albeit with a twist: The craft here is still theater, but of the workplace rather than the stage. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: The movie veers off in a different direction about two-thirds of the way through; the shift is initially jarring but eventually rewarding. Read more

Noel Murray, AV Club: While Corneau delivers a slick, well-acted piece with a surprising mid-movie twist, Love Crime is too thin and too on-point to deliver the jolt he and co-screenwriter Nathalie Carter most likely intended. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: This is a ridiculous movie - a thriller so indifferent to suspense, so above mystery that one character literally stabs another in the front. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: On the one hand, you have to admire such obsessive mise en scene; on the other, there's something wrong with a suspense film when the sets are more interesting than the characters. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: The craftsmanship lifts this genre exercise above the routine. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: It's all tease in the first half, and all implausibilities in the second. Still, Thomas is always worth watching, in French or in English, whether her mood be chilly or tropical. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: Love Crime may not have much to do with love, but the crimes are meanly delicious. Read more

Sheri Linden, Los Angeles Times: It is a bit of dark fun before it turns preposterous and unsatisfying, piffle dressed up in steely sang-froid. Read more

Scott Tobias, NPR: Without a plausible backdrop, all that's left of Love Crime are the power games between two duplicitous women and the serpentine plotting that results. And even that, under the slightest scrutiny, frays like a thin layer of tissue paper. Read more

Joe Dziemianowicz, New York Daily News: More cold fish than cold-blooded, director Alain Correau keeps his movie buttoned up and predictable. Read more

V.A. Musetto, New York Post: A super-cool thriller in the style of Alfred Hitchcock and Claude Chabrol. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: The two-handed duet at the center of Love Crime radiates, but the parade of easily parodied men who stomp in and out of their corporate offices just seem like script rejects from Mad Men. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Corneau, a veteran of police procedurals and workplace dramas, skillfully plays out the scenarios of gamesmanship and humiliation, backstabbing and catfighting. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: The two lead performances make it work, even if the plot eventually seems devious for its own sake. Read more

Calvin Wilson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Would anyone really perpetrate a scheme as complicated and risky as Isabelle's? Not likely - but that's why we go to the movies. Read more

Jordan Mintzer, Variety: Read more

Melissa Anderson, Village Voice: Even KST is left floundering as the misconceived, underwritten totem of today's amoral, power-mad executive, wearing flowing trousers and medallion necklaces not seen since Faye Dunaway demanded a meeting in Network. Read more

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Especially one in a power suit, who knows how to work a room. Read more