The Object of the Crime: A biting comedy (review)

For her first screenplay written without Jean-Pierre Bacri, Agnès Jaoui signs a film rich in nuances around the #Metoo movement. With the audacity of not trying to round the corners.

We were impatiently awaiting Agnès Jaoui’s new film. Because, for the first time since her directorial debut with The Taste of Others (2000), she went 8 years without filming. Because it is his first film since the disappearance of his lifelong accomplice, Jean-Pierre Bacri. But also because she chose to tackle a subject where, on paper, there are only blows to be taken: the Metoo movement. In this case, behind the scenes of a production of the opera “The Marriage of Figaro” where tensions rise within the members of the team when an accusation of sexual assault arises, forcing everyone to take a stand. Agnès Jaoui proposes here, not without ambition, to add nuance and doubts where the fiercest opponents of the two camps confronting each other on this question have only certainties. All while assuming it 100% because she herself takes on the character of the singer who opposes the feminists who want to cancel the culprit before any appearance in court.

Here we find everything that is unique about Jaoui’s cinema: this biting but never mocking humor, this scalpel look at the society around him, a sense of casting mixing different families of cinema without partisanship: Daniel Auteuil, Eye Haïdara, Claire Chust, Oussama Khedam… all irresistible. No room here for a soothing speech. The Object of the Crime establishes the observation that, like the French left, there undoubtedly exist today two irreconcilable feminisms. All without turning it into a thesis but always finding the right tone of comedy to tell the little failings and great cowardice that such a situation provokes. The object of the crime will not be unanimous. The best proof that its director hit the right note

By Agnès Jaoui. With Agnès Jaoui, Eye Haïdara, Daniel Auteuil… Duration: 2h13. Released May 27, 2026