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The online film magazine Combustible Celluloid offers new movie reviews, DVD reviews, film reviews, actor interviews, actress interviews, director interviews, film books and all things cinema related for the thoughtful and passionate. Online for ten years! Over 3000 reviews!

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Genealogies of a Crime (1998)

Rating: 3 Stars (out of 4)

Double Duty

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy Genealogies of a Crime on DVD

Catherine Deneuve stars in a dazzling dual role in this hyper-complex movie from director Raul Ruiz. If I get this straight, she plays a psychiatrist giving radical treatments to her young nephew on one hand, and the lawyer trying to figure out the story after the nephew kills the aunt. Ruiz peppers the film with all kinds of flashbacks and flashbacks-within-flashbacks, so that we're never sure what's what. Nonetheless, I found the film's mystery strangely compelling, no doubt helped by Deneuve's radiant presence. Michel Piccoli co-stars.

Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Michel Piccoli, Melvil Poupaud, Andrzej Seweryn, Bernadette Lafont, Monique Mélinand, Mathieu Amalric
Written by: Pascal Bonitzer, Raoul Ruiz/Raul Ruiz
Directed by: Raoul Ruiz/Raul Ruiz
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Language: French with English subtitles
Running Time: 113 minutes
Date: August 28, 1998