This is a theatrical delight – quite literally – in its combination of farce, murder, courtroom drama and bumbling detectives investigating a faux murder – or, rather, a faux murder charge. It is the sort of screwball comedy Hollywood made in the 1930s, the period when this François Ozon film is set, and indeed there were two Hollywood versions based on the 1934 stage original, respectively starring Betty Hutton and Carole Lombard.

‘The Crime Is Mine’ has much to say in the era of #MeToo with its story of a budding but unsuccessful female actress groped and assaulted by a powerful producer (the finest in Europe, we are told). When he is murdered, Madeleine (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) is happy to take the rap as her female lover, a successful barrister, has found a legal loophole which will get Madeleine exonerated as she was ostensibly acting in self-defence.

But, Madeleine, though the chief suspect, clearly didn’t commit the crime at all, and when the real culprit turns up (a scene-stealing scene from Isabelle Huppert) quite indignant that someone else has taken the credit for her moment of defiance, a battle of wills ensues. This film doesn’t have too many dark places to go – every performance is a heightened, melodramatic, over the top façade, but this is a well constructed feminist tale about the power of women to construct their own narratives out of male aggression and misogyny.

It is, ultimately, quite an achievement for a movie that deals with rape and murder to be given such a lightness of touch, and this may not be for all tastes, but it is an audacious, often thrilling, battle of wills which gives a different answer to the question of whether crime pays than the Hays Code in America in the 1930s would have countenanced. Indeed, it is quite a feat to have a film which effectively imparts the message that crime can actually enhance one’s life and career opportunities, and that creepy male gropers and abusers are means to an end on a feminist solidarity march towards emancipation and sisterhood… and of course top billing in the movie and stage adaptations of their own story.