A CRIME (Alliance, 2006) D: Manuel Pradal, w/ Harvey Keitel, Emmanuelle Béart. Rating: NNN DVD package: n/a Rating: NNN
If you’re pining for the grim old days of Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice, you could do worse than A Crime.
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It’s full of tainted love, guilt and a sense of doom. There’s some truly awful dialogue in the first half-hour, and while it doesn’t take the final narrative step that would make it a noir classic, it’s good dirty fun along the way.
Emmanuelle Béart makes a great femme fatale, all neurotic vulnerability and overripe sexuality. She plays Alice, who’s in love with her downstairs neighbour, Vincent (Norman Reedus), and hatches a plan to get him. Vincent is obsessed with catching his wife’s killer, a barely glimpsed cabbie, so Alice finds one and frames him.
Harvey Keitel is the perfect noir hero as Roger the cabbie: romantic yearning scrambled up with hardboiled sleaze. Keitel and Béart are both powerful actors. Their scenes together crackle with energy and unspoken desires and fears.
Director Manuel Pradal captures a sense of New York’s underbelly and delivers some heat in the sex scenes. Too bad there’s no making-of doc. I’d welcome background on the Asian-controlled dog races and bookie joint.
EXTRAS Widescreen. English, French audio. English subtitles.
