Let's be honest; Technine and I just don't get on. We're talking King's New Clothes here. For better or worse he has a knack of persuading real and bankable actors - Catherine Deneuve is a case in point - to work with him and somehow lend his movies an air of gravitas they actually lack. Technine, you see, is an 'issues' guy. Show him an issue and he'll shoot twelve reels around it and if, accidentally, it hangs together and is not one hundred per cent risible than that's a bonus. Andre Cayatte was an 'issues' man also, back in the day, but the difference between the two is that Cayatte actually knew how to remove the lens cap before shouting 'action', cut his teeth making mainstream films that people actually wanted to watch and, having watched, enjoyed. Here again Technine manages to scare up a fine trio of leads in the shape of Deneuve, Michel Blanc and Emilia Dequenne, and then squander their talents in a rambling, pretentious non-movie.
Review of The Girl on the Train
