The Crime Is Mine review – François Ozon’s 1930s crime comedy is a moreish crowdpleaser

François Ozon has directed plenty of complex, demanding and serious dramas: Everything Went Fine, Summer of 85 and By the Grace of God, along with adaptations of Fassbinder. But he also has a sweet tooth for breezy, silly, crowd-pleasing theatrical comedies like this one (which does however appear to contain a Fassbinder reference, if you look hard enough). Watching it is like being force-fed a large box of chocolates; moreish, though. There is certainly an amazing blue-chip cast of French movie-acting royalty, including Isabelle Huppert, Fabrice Luchini and André Dussollier.

The Crime Is Mine is adapted from a 1934 French stage comedy called Mon Crime by Georges Berr and Louis Verneuil which has already spawned two different madcap Hollywood versions in the 30s and 40s, respectively starring Carole Lombard and Betty Hutton. Nadia Tereszkiewicz plays Madeleine, an impecunious would-be stage star, engaged to wealthy young chump André (Édouard Sulpice); we first see her storming out of a villa belonging to the odious producer who has just tried to press his attentions on her. Later, Madeleine discovers that this predatory creep has been murdered and she is instantly and wrongly suspected of the crime. But Madeleine’s lawyer-roommate Pauline (Rebecca Marder) on whom the film confers tastefully indirect attributes of a gay identity, cooks up a cheeky plan. They will claim that Madeleine really did kill this man, but out of self-defence striking back against a hateful rapist – and her impassioned speech from the dock will get her a light sentence, or even get her off, and then kickstart a sensational career in the limelight.

All appears to go swimmingly, until a certain imperious movie actor of the silent age shows up; this is Odette Chaumette, the French equivalent of Norma Desmond, played with magnificent hauteur by Huppert, who occasionally appears only distantly aware of other actors saying their lines in the gaps she leaves for them. With urbane confidence, the film rattles its way through jokes about rape, murder and what a later generation would call #MeToo; a British or Hollywood movie might hesitate about appearing to make light of these things. But this is a French film we’re talking about; very French. It is tightly drilled, robustly performed and entertainingly shallow.

• The Crime Is Mine is in UK and Irish cinemas from 18 October.