"Love Crime"

The Gallic "Crime of Love" is a psychological thriller film in two parts, in a battle as sharp as a knife, as the title of the event. Neither half of the story is compelling, but Shivers first sequences at least offer a flirt love-hate relationship between two powerful women executives.

They played with Kristin Scott Thomas, Ludivine Sagnier change the degree of intrigue and basic needs, and less subtlety. The latest film by Alain Corneau ("Tous Les Matins du Monde"), who died in 2010, is a bit 'dark fun until it turns ridiculous and unsatisfying, nonsense, dressed in a steely cold blood in September.

An intriguingly ambiguous after-hours work session between Christine (Scott Thomas, effortlessly monstrous) and Isabelle (Sagnier, straining) kicks off the drama. Its undertow of seduction courses through succeeding scenes, as the women take the roles of mentor and protégée to outrageous lows. Master manipulator Christine bores in on Isabelle's insecurity, all but delivering her into the arms of her own sometime lover (Patrick Mille, convincing as a man out of his depth). When Christine takes credit for one of Isabelle's great ideas, the younger woman is willing to chalk it up to the law of the jungle, until her assistant (Guillaume Marquet) goads her to stand up for herself.

Switching its focus from the too-vague-to-be-believed depiction of multinational finance, the film turns into a reverse-engineered police procedural of a perfect crime. But however finely jigsawed the puzzle, the calibration is off.

"Love Crime." No MPAA rating. Running time: 1 hours, 46 minutes. At the Laemmle Royal, Beverly Hills.