"Down by Love" is one of those movies where the one or two-line plot description on IMDB tells you everything that happens in the movie. It holds no surprises whatsoever.

In case you missed that description, the movie is about a "forbidden love affair" between a married warden and a new arrival at his prison, a sultry, enigmatic young woman played by "Blue is the Warmest Colour"'s Adele Exarchopolous.

Yes, you know where this is going right from the first frame: they're going to start having sex, the man will fall in love/become obsessed, he will take bigger risks to see the girl, he'll be found out.

The movie is not a romance, as it might have been, and nor is it an erotic thriller, as it also easily could have been. Therefore with this material we are left only with drama, which indicates the movie will have to play it straight, showing the love affair as a staid sequence of events with a conclusion it doesn't even pretend we can't see coming. It features some rather frank sex scenes, but eroticism is clearly not on the cards for such a serious movie, and these are nothing out of the ordinary for a French flick.

The only thing I didn't expect from "Down by Love" came after I had finished watching it. I went on IMDB to write this review, and I saw that the movie is based on a true story. I never would have guessed that: the completely rote plot developments seems to come out of an outline from "Screenwriting for Dummies". If it's really "based on a true story", the filmmakers needed to study that story more closely. They may have come across details that could have set it apart.

I will finish by saying that there was one example of this lack of truth that I found particularly objectionable, and that is the Adele Exarchopolous character. This characterisation is indeed the stuff of erotic thrillers or softcore porn. She is only present to arouse the warden. We see barely anything of her personality, but plenty of her body; the movie doesn't even explain why she's in jail in the first place! And yet this is based on a true story? Did they just skip the bits with her in it?

This is all the more obvious when one considers that the main actor really doesn't evince much sympathy, and nor does his character generate much interest. It's the female lead that gets us thinking, but she seems to be playing a male fantasy, rather than just inspiring one in the protagonist.

Perhaps the filmmakers were more sympathetic to the warden's story than they wanted us to know?

The three central performances keep you watching right up to the Fade Out but against this the director doesn't seem to know what genre he is working in so it holds the interest in spite of inept direction. On paper it's a simple premise: The warden of a women's prison becomes sexually involved with one of the prisoners. The warden is portrayed initially as being happily married with a young daughter and a healthy sexual relationship with his wife, who also works in the Prison Service. As warden he could, presumably, sleep with any and every one of the prisoners but has clearly not been tempted until a new girl arrives. The prisoner instigates the affair and soon the warden is taking enormous risks that put his job at stake and costs him his marriage but what is never made clear is whether or not the girl is manipulating him. These are minor beefs in a movie where the acting is everything.

I gave seven for the absolutely mesmerizing cast. This couple formed by Guillaume Gallienne (Les garçons et Guillaume à table, Yves Saint Laurent),one of the most versatile and surprising French actors (he's also part of la Comedy Francaise theater company),always powerful in his creativity, and a very talented young actress,like Adele Exarchopoulos (La vie d'Adele) who can explode with emotions, seemed odd on paper but it works, like all the other actors (notable mention to the wonderful Stephanie Cleau). Fortunately, I must say, because the director Pierre Godeau, doesn't seem able to cope properly with the sensitive matter in the plot. A love story in prison between the jail director and a prisoner, inspired to a real fact that happened to "Emma" , a young woman involved in France, in the vicious kidnapping and homicide of a young Jewish man by a street gang. None of the criminal case is present in the movie. Godeau sublimates the characters in the world apart of the prison, which can be cool, but he hasn't a real direction. Here everything is left in mid-air, or reduced to simplistic answers. The actors nonetheless make the movie compelling.