A Deneuve Dozen
GENEALOGIES OF A CRIME
DIRECTOR: RAOUL RUIZ
FRANCE/PORTUGAL, 1997
Ruiz’s dark comedy is based on the case of Hermine van Hug, a 1920s psychoanalyst who believed that criminal tendencies are formed at age five, and who labeled her nephew a murderer before he reached adolescence. The nephew proved her right by strangling her. Catherine Deneuve plays Solange, a lawyer who loses every case she represents and nevertheless decides to represent the young accused killer. An intelligent meditation on family, free will, and the nature of the criminal mind. “A droll mock-philosophical inquiry that refuses to take itself too seriously while finding a hundred different ways to ask, ‘What if?’ ”—Stephen Holden, New York Times. (103 mins.)