Love Crime

With unemployment rates high and the economy in the tank, today’s corporate world is as cutthroat as ever.

So it’s disappointing not to have more real-world resonance in Love Crime, a French revenge thriller that takes office politics to extremes.

At least the final film from acclaimed director Alain Corneau (Tous les Matins du Monde), who died after the film was completed last year, gives two excellent actresses a chance to match wits and stab backs with the type of ferocity that’s more typically seen among male characters.

Kristin Scott Thomas plays Christine, a high-powered executive in an anonymous global corporation whose young assistant, Isabelle (Ludivine Sagnier), admires her boss for her ruthless business sense. What she doesn’t realize is that Christine is also jealous and manipulative, so when Isabelle comes up with the idea that helps close a major deal with another firm, Christine steps and claims credit.

The tension between the two escalates when Isabelle takes a business trip with Christine’s husband (Patrick Mille) that ends in an affair, which doesn’t seem to bother Christine as much as the power struggle at its center, which allows her to play the sort of cruel mind games that only someone with her authority could carry out. As Isabelle becomes more desperate, Christine’s ultimate motive remains cloudy.

Maybe it’s overstating to say the film has some Hitchcockian aspirations with its cold-blooded cover-ups and twisty plotting, but at least it resembles a more dramatic version of The Devil Wears Prada.

However, the script by Corneau and Nathalie Carter winds up rather predictable and loses narrative momentum as it goes along, thanks in part to its biggest twist coming too soon, namely the crime referenced in the title.

Love Crime works best in the first hour, when the back-and-forth scheming and duplicity between the women is at its sinister best. The motivation is there and the setting is ripe, but the script doesn’t follow through on its convictions.

Scott Thomas and Sagnier (The Devil’s Double), both working in bilingual mode, make compelling intergenerational adversaries. Yet the characters and relationship aren’t developed to the point of developing consistent suspense.

Not rated, 104 minutes.