Le Lieu du Crime on AllMovie

Scene of the Crime (Le Lieu du Crime) begins with a quote from Great Expectations. Thirteen-year-old Nicolas Giraudi, picking flowers in a cemetery, is surprised by escaped criminal Wadeck Stanczak, who orders the boy to bring him some money. Displaying no signs of fear, Giraudi does what he is told, and as a "reward" his life is spared by the convict. Later on, Stanczak gets stinking drunk at a road house managed by Giraudi's mother, Catherine Deneuve. Fascinated by Stanczak, Deneuve arranges for the fugitive to take a room at a local hotel. On the day that Giraudi is to receive his first communion, his mother plans to run off with Stanczak. The climactic set-to between criminals and police has the negatory effect of separating Giraudi from his mother; on a more positive note, however, the boy has been drawn closer to his father Victor Lanoux, whom Deneuve despised. The dreamlike, new wave-ish Scene of the Crime is a lot more complex than this skeletal synopsis would suggest.