The Swindle 1997

Victor Michel Serrault and Betty Isabelle Huppert are small-time confidence tricksters who work from a compact camper van, honing their craft on business conventions and corporate gatherings. Betty uses her charm to lure a delegate into a hotel room, where she slips him knock-out drops, and then Victor joins in to rifle through the victim’s cash, cheques, credit cards, and passport. Victor’s golden rule guides them: never be greedy, take only a little from each victim.

Betty, energized by the thrill of influence, grows more ambitious. She begins an affair with Maurice François Cluzet, a courier for money launderers tasked with delivering an attaché case to the Caribbean. Together they devise a risky swap, exchanging Maurice’s case—containing 5 million Swiss francs—for an identical case stuffed with newspaper. When Maurice’s contacts realize they’ve been swindled, they imprison him, subject him to brutal questioning, and then execute him.

After the carnage, the pair ultimately produce the “right” case—containing 2.8 million Swiss francs—and the gangsters, wary of continuing the game and perhaps impressed by Victor’s maxim, release them. Yet the partnership strains under the weight of risk: Victor, furious that Betty overstepped and dragged them into something beyond their league, disappears with the 2.2 million Swiss francs he has kept.

Betty refuses to back down, and she tracks down Victor at his Swiss hideaway, determined to salvage something from their misadventure. In the end, the stubborn duo reach a reconciliation, their uneasy alliance restored even as the memory of betrayal lingers.