The Elegant Criminal

Stars: Daniel Auteil (Jean de Florette; Manon of the Spring; Mama, There's A Man In Your Bed), Jean Poiret (The Last Metro), Jacques Weber (Cyrano de Bergerac). Daniel Auteil delivers a mannered, but nevertheless engaging, performance as 19-century French criminal Pierre Lacenaire, an upscale lad whose career objective was a tad off the beaten track: "I resolved to be a plague upon mankind." Elegantly filmed, the story is told in flashback, following Lacenaire's date with the guillotine, as his companions edit his memoirs. The suggestion seems to be that Victorian society stifled the creative and sexual preferences of Lacenaire (he was a gay poet), thereby opening the door for a life of crime (this doesn't really jibe with the early scenes which show him robbing his own mother and taking a keen interest in fisticuffs at the seminary). All in all, however, The Elegant Criminal is an entertaining depiction of a rogue's life which really soars during the courtroom finale when the urbane Lacenaire wittily defends himself and entertains the spectators at court in the process. Audience: Foreign film fans will surely enjoy this very watchable period piece with a good satiric bite.