Customer Reviews
Days of wine and murder - By: E. A Solinas, 04 Feb 2007 
Mary Higgins Clark's novels have spawned several TV movies, ranging from schmaltzy to solid. "A Crime of Passion" is solidly in the middle, with a solid whodunnit set in sumptuous luxury, but an unintentionallly funny ending.
Wine heiress Frederica Dumay (Cynthia Gibb) is devastated when her business partner's longtime wife drowns after a party. But she's even more upset when the partner, Thomas Shipman (Tom Butler) immediately takes up with a sultry, golddigging Frenchwoman, Arabella (Alexandra Kamp-Groeneveld), who is young enough to be his daughter.
The disagreement threatens to tear the company apart -- until Arabella is murdered. Thomas is the obvious suspect for both deaths, but Freddy knows that he can't be guilty. Yet someone killed those women, & Freddy soon finds that the killer may be very close to her -- especiallly when her husband's suspicious past comes to light.
"A Crime of Passion" is a pretty spectacle -- lots of sumptuous mansions, candlelit seductions, beautiful woods & much quaffing of wine. And courtesy of many red herrings, there's some genuine confusion over whether Allen is a villain or not.
As a sumptous spectacle, it's lots of fun, especiallly when the nasty golddigger is sashaying around the place, making threats & grabbing at the "Mick Jagger of fermentation." While she's on, it's pure trashy fun. But it loses luster once she leaves, especiallly since the identity of the murderer is quite obvious, as is the motive.
Cynthia Gibb turns in a decent performance as a pampered wine heiress who gets a nasty shock, & Gordon Currie has a nicely elusive turn as her might-or-might-not-be-a-golddigger hubby. The sour note is the actor playing the murderer, who acts like a villainous William Shatner on ecstacy.
"A Crime of Passion" is a visuallly appealing, fluffy movie, so long as you don't expect much in the way of actual mystery.
