When the teacher tries to embarrass Alice (Natacha Regnier) by making her read aloud, Alice doesn't need the text. She knows her Rimbaud by heart and recites with cold-blooded precision: "Damnation's delights may be more profound, Quick! A crime, that I may fall intothevoid..."

Alice's accomplice is the virginal Luc (Jérémie Renier). At first, Criminal Lovers appears to traverse familiar Hollywood territory: sociopathic lovers commit a meaningless crime. But when Alice and Luc flee into the forest (or down the rabbit hole) and fall into the clutches of a mysterious man in the woods (Miki Manojlovic), the film begins to seem less like Killers Born au Naturel and more like a twisted version of Hansel and Gretel.

Clearly, director-writer François Ozon has more on his mind than murder. Slowly but surely he reveals the psychology of his characters by linking their actions to recurring symbols. Guns, keys and knives are male. Open books, traps and locks are female. Rabbits sym­bolize both sexuality and innocence — and these wild woods are full of rabbits. By the time the big bad wolves arrive, it's clear that no one in this story will live happily ever after.