A wicked pastiche of genre-bending and pop-culture iconography, Francois Ozon's Criminal Lovers is at once the most violent and most familiar of the French provocateur's movies. Ostensibly a bloody lovers-on-the-run story, the movie quickly reveals that it has more on its mind than mere mayhem. Ozon uses the genre as a springboard for his own thematic obsessions: the twisted dynamics of human relationships, the ubiquity of violence, repressed homosexuality, the link between sex and death. The movie charts an unpredictable journey over eerily recognizable terrain. References to other works abound: the Bonnie and Clyde scenario morphs into a twisted rendition of Hansel and Gretel. A frenetic getaway segues into an outrageous Edenic idyll. Despite the heavily symbolic material, Ozon manages to elicit scarily convincing performances from his actors. (Natacha Regnier is particularly good as the wild-eyed Alice.) More ambitious and thought-out than the similarly strident Natural Born Killers, Ozon's movie can sometimes get bogged down by his chilly academicism. Worthwhile gestures abound nonetheless, the most memorable of which is a character's hauntingly serene smile after being gunned down -- a concise embodiment of the movie's exploration of the intermingling of pleasure and pain.