Love Crime is a 2013 film from Mongolia directed by Delgerbayar Purevdorj.
Chulun is the wealthy owner of a Mongolian mining company. One night he's out at a restaurant when he sees the captivating Uranbileg (Ariana Gansuh), a lovely young woman who is out partying with her friends. Chulun is instantly besotted with Uranbileg and decides that he has to have her. He comes back to the restaurant on another day and does in fact see her again, but is unpleasantly surprised to discover that Uranbileg already has a boyfriend, an artist named Tugsu.
Not to worry, however! Soon after this while Chulun is out and about, he runs into Bayar, an old high school friend who is now a doctor. They go out for a night of drinking, which relocates to Chulun's apartment for more drinking. An extremely intoxicated Bayar reveals to Chulun a momentous secret. He is actually working with the Mongolian equivalent of the CIA, and has invented a drug that will cause Easy Amnesia. Anyone who takes this drug will have their entire memories wiped for an extended period of time.
Chulun falls victim to temptation. He worms his way into Tugsu's acquaintance, pretending to be interested in his art. Eventually he jumps him, chloroforms him into unconsciousness, and gives him a shot of the drug, thus erasing any memory of Uranbileg in Tugsu's mind. Then he does the same thing with Uranbileg, chloroforming her, injecting her, and staging a car accident. When she awakes, Chulun tells her that she was in a car accident, that she lost her memory...and that they have been dating for a year and been living together for four months.
Tropes:
- Anachronic Order: Starts out with the scene where Chulun first sees Uranbileg in the nightclub. Then the movie jumps forward to the car accident, Uranbileg's memory loss, Chulun telling her that they live together, and an uncertain Uranbileg leaving the hospital and going to a stranger's house. Then the narrative skips back to Chulun running into Bayar and finding out about the magic Easy Amnesia drug, and the rest of the story plays out from there.
- Bed Trick: A quite elaborate one in which Chulun doses Uranbileg with a memory wipe drug and, when she finally comes out of it, tells her that they are living together and engaged to be married.
- Briefcase Full of Money: Bayar runs into Chulun and Uranbileg at the restaurant. One look at her and he figures out that Chulun dosed her with the memory wipe drug. Chulun comes to his hospital, puts a duffel bag on his desk, and starts pulling wads of $50 and $100 bills out of the duffel bag. It works in buying Bayar's silence.
- Chekhov's Gunman: The bartender at the restaurant where Chulun saw Uranbileg. Out of nowhere, he shows up at Chulun's apartment and drops the bomb: he has pictures of Uranbileg and Tugsu dating, he knows that their memories have been erased, and he knows Chulun is behind it all. He then says that he's told Uranbileg and Tugsu and, if he wishes to avoid imprisonment, Chulun must leave Mongolia immediately.
- The Con: The whole plot was a con! There is no Easy Amnesia drug! Bayar, Uranbileg, Tugsu, and the bartender—in fact, everyone else in the cast except for Tula the amateur nurse—were all in on it together, tricking Chulun into thinking he'd wiped Uranbileg's memories, with the ultimate objective of scamming him out of a whole bunch of money.
- Dutch Angle: Used to reinforce a sense of tension during the scene where Chulun bribes Bayar, after the latter has figured out that the former used the memory wipe drug on Uranbileg.
- Easy Amnesia: The drug produces a state of Easy Amnesia, wiping out the memories of victims for a certain period of time based on the dose. Subverted when it all turns out to be a huge hoax.
- The Ending Changes Everything: The ending reveals that there is no easy amnesia drug. Bayar, Uranbileg, Tugsu, and the bartender were all conspiring from the start, fooling Chulun into thinking that he'd wiped Uranbileg's and Tugsu's memories, so they could scam him out of an apartment and a huge sum of cash.
- Finger-Twitching Revival: How Tugsu is shown waking up after receiving his dose of the Easy Amnesia drug.
- Headbutt of Love: Chulun and Uranbileg do this during their Happy Ending embrace at the airport.
- In Love with the Mark: Not only is Uranbileg running a scam on Chulun, she is fully aware that he thinks he drugged her and wiped her memory in order to commit rape by deception. She falls in love with him anyway.
- Inner Monologue: Starts with a scene in the restaurant where, while Uranbileg strums a guitar and sings for her friends, Chulun stares at her and thinks about how she's beautiful and he has to have her.
- Karma Houdini: Chulun winds up losing a big stack of money, but other than that, no one suffers any consequences for their actions. Uranbileg's three coconspirators get the money, Tugsu gets a real girlfriend in the person of sexy Tula, and Chulun gets Uranbileg for real.
- Monochrome Past: During the reveal, this is how the flashbacks of The Con are shown, like how Bayar the doctor was only pretending to be drunk and how Tugsu was awake (was the chloroform fake too?) and aware when Chulun was about to inject him with the fake memory drug.
- Pair the Spares: Part of Chulun's scheme to make sure Uranbileg and Tugsu never find out about each other. After zapping Tugsu's memory he whisks Tugsu away to his country cottage to "recover" from his "accident". Then he hires a very good-looking woman named Tula to look after Tugsu in the cottage while Tugsu supposedly recuperates. It works, as Tugsu and Tula fall in love.
- Plot Hole: The Ending Changes Everything and actually solves several plot holes, like how both Uranbileg and Tugsu are so excessively gullible, how Uranbileg never questioned why there's a grand total of one photo to prove that she's been dating Chulun for a year, why Bayar would be toting around multiple doses of a classified, illegal drug (and all the classified documents!) in his briefcase while he went out on a night of drinking, and why Tugsu and Uranbileg don't put it together when they meet and find out that both of them suffered bouts of Easy Amnesia at the same time. But it still doesn't explain how they even targeted Chulun in the first place, or what led them to believe he'd take the bait about the memory drug.
- Race for Your Love: Having realized that she loves Chulun after all, Uranbileg races to the airport as he's boarding a plane to China. She thinks he's taken off, but he got off the plane and the Happy Ending has them embracing.
- Shout-Out: When Bayar first tells Chulun about the Easy Amnesia drug he's invented, a skeptical Chulun says it sounds like Will Smith zapping people in Men in Black.
- There Is Only One Bed: How Tula, who has fallen for Tugsu during the time she's been looking after him, makes her move. She tells him that she's grown afraid of sleeping alone in the downstairs bed. He says she can sleep in his bed, and, naturally, sex follows.
- Time-Passes Montage: A montage after Uranbileg warms up to her "boyfriend" Chulun shows them going out on dates and going to a swimming pool, as well as going to a hospital so she can get a CAT scan.
- Toplessness from the Back: From Uranbileg as she and Chulun make love after they get married.
- Villain Protagonist: Chulun, the protagonist, is a man so carried away by lust for Uranbileg that he's willing to give her an Easy Amnesia drug in order to commit rape by deception, and he's also willing to zap her boyfriend's memories in order to make it possible.
