That most mercurial of French directors, François Ozon (Everything Went Fine, Potiche, Swimming Pool) takes a mischievous look at murder in this fun, if frustratingly slight screwball comedy. Set in 1930s Paris, The Crime Is Mine is an adaptation of Mon Crime, a play by Georges Berr and Louis Verneuil, and features an eye-catching cast camping it up to the max. Nadia Tereszkiewicz (Rosalie, Only The Animals) plays aspiring actress Madeleine, who lives with her adoring, similarly impoverished lawyer pal Pauline (Rebecca Marder).

When Madeleine is accused of killing an elderly film producer who was sexually harassing her, Pauline transforms her into a star of the courtroom, with the press and public hanging on Madeleine’s every utterance. Fabrice Luchini is a hoot as the investigating judge who is compromised by his associations, while an irresistible Isabelle Huppert emerges to cause some flamboyant, late-in-the-game complications as an actress based on Sarah Bernhardt.

The film’s appealing theatricality and appetite for farce nods to its stage origins, as well as the Hollywood comedies of that era, and it zips along with gusto, featuring chic costumes alongside the requisite twists and turns. Tereszkiewicz and Marder are effervescent as the underdogs using their guts and guile to contort things in their favour. However, given the French film industry’s famously disappointing response to the #MeToo movement, this tongue-in-cheek approach to casting-couch harassment and institutional sexism can sometimes leave a sour taste. Although The Crime Is Mine fires plenty of shots, it doesn’t seem committed to taking out its targets.

The Crime Is Mine is in cinemas from Friday 18 October.