Saw Trouble in Paradise, a delightfully witty film. It follows a diamond burglar who steals women's hearts as often as their jewels. He meets and falls in love with a female thief. Their romance is one of mutual admiration. Their gleeful interest in the criminal and larcenous is supposed to be a sort of endearingly morbid thing. It reminds me of The Addams Family in that way. They fix their sights on a wealthy perfume-heiress who is single, flirty and bored by money-matters. The plot thickens however when it becomes unclear to everyone whether the feigned romance is real.
The film gleefully smirks with innuendo, sexy wit and outright mentioning of unmentionables. At one point a suspicious rival suitor is thrown off the scent with talk of the harems of Constantinople ("they have harems there?" "Yes... all kinds.") The atmosphere is decadent but charmingly so. The film is full of little flourishes. At one point they attend an opera. The camera zooms in on the score. In the background an actress sings "I love him! I love him!" The pages flip indicating a flash forward to the end of the show at which point the actress is now singing "I hate him! I hate him!" Dry but hilarious stuff. It's very frothy of course but if you've a stomach for theatrics, then this is for you.
Also, there's a lot of old Hollywood sexual ambiguity. The seduction scene is marvelous and in addition to the harem bit above, they also speak of gigolos. The thief first connects to the wealthy heiress by critiquing her markup ("I could fix the whole thing in a minute" he declares.) The fey refinement of the burglar is a desirable, enviable quality, far superior to the gruff but stupid, ex-military rival suitors. In this I was flattered by the film and so may be more charmed than fascinated by this movie. Either way, what fun!
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