Les amants criminels (1999)is François Ozon's topsy turvey world of children's fairy tales and psychotic horror based primarily on Hansel and Gretal but with nods to other children's stories. But perhaps to, Ozon recognizes the frequently violent aspects of these tales and has recasts this one in modern terms with Alice and Luc as the high school students whose adventure is presaged by Alice's recitation (shown in flashback) of a fragment from a poem by Rimbaud: Hell cannot attack pagans I'm still alive! Later damnation's delights will be more profound Quick a crime! That I may fall into the void, by human law So the crime is murder, performed by willing dupe Luc, of unsure sexuality, under the spell of the psychotic Alice. The children retreat to a forest to dispose of the body and become lost, eventually taking refuge in a hut of an ogre who intends to fatten Luc and starve Alice. The ogre take a fancy to Luc and after some preliminaries partakes of Luc in a way that goes some way toward deciding his sexuality. But still loyal to Alice, Luc engineers an escape and the pair eventually attempt consummation of their love naked in a clearing under the benign gaze of the forest creatures in a bizarre nod to a Disney animation feature. It all ends badly however in a deviation from the living happily ever after coda of fairy tales. To heighten the sense of the incongruous, Ozon adds a score that include themes from such great love stories as Trastan und Isolde but he is intending to amuse here rather than chill as in his Regarde la mer An entertainment, definitely not a statement. Not for those offended by the homoerotic.
Review of Criminal Lovers
