The Girl on the Train (2009) User Reviews

Not what it is marketed as

[asc85 · 7/10 · 30 May 2010]

First of all, I have to say that I am positive about this film. But I'm not sure why this film is being marketed as one about a young woman who says she was attacked by minorities that creates a media frenzy. Sure, that happens in the movie, but it's towards the end, and doesn't even seem to me to be the primary thrust of the picture. To me, the film is about the adventures of a screwed-up young woman (well-played by the very pretty Emilie Dequenne) who can't find a job, moves in with a potentially dangerous young wrestler, gets involved in drugs, and, oh by the way, gives self-inflicted wounds to herself and creates a major controversy.

I guess one of the reasons I liked this movie was because it told a story that I wasn't sure where it was going, but I didn't mind because the story was an extremely interesting one, that cut and cross-cut to different sub-plots and characters.

Thought provoking and definitely worth seeing

[tacitus-707-663549 · 7/10 · 8 April 2010]

I disagree with the negative reviewer, who I think missed the point. This film intentionally avoided telling the viewer what to think about the situation or characters in this film, forcing the viewer to come to his or her own conclusions, thereby provoking a lot of thought and discussion. I saw the film with my Jewish girlfriend, and we had completely different takes on the movie and its central character. My girlfriend thought the movie itself was anti-Semitic for its negative depiction of a broken Jewish marriage-- an impression I did not (and still don't) share.

The film, based on actual events in Paris in 2006, is divided into two parts. The first part is entitled "The Circumstances" and tells the story of a 19-year-old girl and the affair she unthinkingly falls into with a young French wrestling star. They end up moving in together and he gets involved with a shady drug business, of which she is unaware. He is stabbed by a drug runner and arrested. She returns home to her mother (Catherine Deneuve). Unable to get a job, distraught over her disastrous relationship, the girl impulsively cuts herself, draws swastikas on her stomach, and tells the police she was attacked by a gang of 6 boys on a commuter train outside of Paris because they mistakenly thought she was Jewish (she is not) on the basis of a business card of a Jewish lawyer she said she had in her purse.

The second part of the film is titled "The Consequences." The media pick up the story-- a development she hadn't apparently foreseen-- and her mother asks her friend, the Jewish lawyer, for advice. He advises her to bring her daughter to his country home, where he, his son and daughter in law, and their 13-year-old son, who is preparing for his Bar Mitzvah, are spending the weekend. Everyone at the house seems to understand immediately that her story is false, and they want to minimize the amount of trouble she will be in if she confesses. She ultimately admits that she made up the story and writes out a confession to that effect. The French judicial system lets her off easy, and that wraps up the film.

But the viewer is left to grapple with unanswered questions. Why did she make up this story? She doesn't seem to have wanted attention, and seeks to avoid the media, whose interest seems to surprise her. With all its obvious holes and weaknesses, why did the police and the media believe the story? (She is, after all, not Jewish.) The film makes the point that anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise in France. Why then does the media focus on an obviously false report of an anti-Semitic attack in which the victim is not even Jewish? Give this film a chance. The filmmakers could have tried to answer all those questions for us, as most American directors would have done, but instead set their viewers the challenge of answering them for themselves. Ultimately, that decision made for a much more interesting movie-going experience.

Frustrating, a key social theme diluted and squandered

[secondtake · 5/10 · 12 July 2010]

The Girl on the Train (2009)

The hook that made this movie successful is not enough to make the movie good. The added plot in the first half fizzles and seems ultimately irrelevant. Yes, the main actress plays the part of an "airhead," as the subtitle translates her stupidity. But the movie itself has some of the same disease. It lacks formal intelligence, and it stretches out a few basic ideas over 105 minutes, posing as a serious movie with serious implications.

Not that it's misery to watch. In a way, the fact that you get sucked in waiting and waiting for some basic conflict to formulate says something about the acting and editing. This is contemporary Paris, or a cozy, idealized side to it. And you can't dismiss the theme of anti-Semitism, which gets some elaboration and complexity as you go, including some great, if simplified, conversations between Jews at their country house about what it means to be a contemporary Jew. It's conveniently packaged, but adds some needed interest to the events.

This leads eventually to a rather long and oddly placed bar mitzvah celebration, and some more roller blading filler. It's a frustrating thing to see all this content watered down by a single turn of events, the faked hate crime attack, which happens well past the halfway point of the movie. And around which the suspense of being fooled is left out of the movie, because we are told everything as it happens.

The girl behind the lie

[treeline1 · 16 June 2010]

In this story set in Paris, we get to know two very different families and see them eventually connect. The first is that of Jeanne, a rather aimless and unmotivated young woman who lives with her mother (Catherine Deneuve) and spends her time roller blading. The second is that of successful lawyer Nathan who is about to celebrate his grandson's bar mitzvah. When Jeanne becomes involved with a low-life creep and does something very foolish, it is Nathan who comes to the rescue.

The movie is based on the true story of a girl who claimed she was attacked on a train because she was Jewish. The nation was shocked and even more outraged when it turned out she made it all up. The movie is made in a pseudo-New Wave style with unsympathetic, isolated characters, abrupt scene cuts, unresolved story lines, and the constant blaring of passing trains. Jeanne's lie was a huge event in France, but here it is merely a part of her outsider's psyche.

If you like stories about complex, non-mainstream characters, this is the movie for you. It is blunt and unapologetic, fascinating and above all, very real.

how to fake a neo-Nazi attack

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 4 December 2015]

Jeanne (Émilie Dequenne) is a beautiful roller blading girl. Her mother Louise (Catherine Deneuve) was an ex to prominent Jewish crusading lawyer Samuel Bleistein. Jeanne fails to get a job with him. She starts dating sketchy Franck. He's arrested and then he rejects her. She's heartbroken and fakes an attack by neo-Nazis on a train even cutting herself.

She's an enigma wrapped in a mystery performed by a blank actress. I don't feel like the movie explain anything about her. Dequenne is a beautiful girl but I don't get a sense of her character. In many ways, she is the least interesting character in the movie. As for the story, it's not terribly intense or dramatic. The danger for her is so low. This is supposedly inspired by true events. It does make me wonder about the real story. This could have been a great exciting character study.

A girl who goes off the rails

[robert-temple-1 · 7/10 · 9 February 2017]

There have been three films and two novels with the title THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN. (There is also a novel called GIRL ON A TRAIN.) The earlier novel was written by my friend Peter Whitehead, but it has never been filmed. The second novel was made into the third film. Of the three films, this was the first, though its title in French was very different, namely LA FILLE DU RER (THE GIRL OF THE R.E.R.). For those unfamiliar with the underground systems of Paris, there are two. The first is the well-known Metro, which goes short hops a few minutes apart. The second is called the R.E.R. It goes for long distances between a few main stops and extends way out to the far suburbs, being a genuine rapid transit system for commuters. So the girl of this story is not really on a train per se, she is merely on a commuter service which starts overground and goes underground when it reaches the centre of Paris. Four years later, a less well known film of the title was made in America, with its action commencing at New York's Grand Central Station. And in 2016, a British film of this title was made with Emily Blunt, which has had a considerable commercial success and is the best known of the three. This one is a brilliantly made film by that old pro, André Téchiné. He directs films as effortlessly as water flows under a bridge. But that is not to say that the film is wholly satisfying. The script is very good, but the story conception is somewhat perplexing, with insufficient background information. Hence it lacks focus, unlike the cameras.The director presumably must have wanted to make a film which remained enigmatic and suggestive, leaving us guessing about the layers beneath. That must have been his intention, and in that he succeeded. But is that really effective? The central character in the film is a very young woman, really still a girl, who is 'all mixed up', to say the least of it. No effort is made to get us to sympathise with her, nor is any made to get us to dislike her. We are meant to be puzzled observers. It is clear from the very beginning that she is wilful, foolish, pig-headed, and astonishingly stupid. She has a vague childlike charm, but she also can snarl and pout at the drop of a hat. Her father was an Army officer who was killed in battle in Afghanistan when she was 5, and she has been raised by a rather aloof mother, played by France's leading ice queen, Catherine Deneuve. Deneuve shows a surprising amount of diffused and unfocused sympathy, clearly trying hard to love her child but finding it difficult. The daughter tells her very sinister drug-dealer boyfriend that she and her mother are so close that they are 'inseparable', but that is merely one of the girl's many disembodied fantasies. She wants to be loved but is not at all discriminating about who might do so. In other words, she is a lost young soul wandering the world, dressed only in a smile. The girl is played to perfection by an extremely talented young Belgian actress, Émilie Dequenne, who at 28 looked and behaved younger. She played Valentine in the 2006 film of LE GRAND MEAULNES. The girl inexplicably goes to pieces and fabricates a sensational tale of having been assaulted by anti-Semites while travelling on the RER. Before boarding it, she had cut herself with a knife to make a gash on her face, cut off part of her hair, and drawn swastikas (as it happens, the wrong way round) on her stomach. She then goes to the police and claims this was all done to her by neo-fascist yobs. This causes a scandal in the press and even the President of the Republic issues a statement of sympathy for her. But then her story unravels when it is realized that she made it all up. She does not appear to realize why she did this, nor can anyone else figure it out. She is not even Jewish. The story is far more complicated than this, and involves penetrating studies of several characters, resulting in a tapestry portrait of some intersecting lives and groups of people constituting a haphazard milieu, all of whom are in their own ways deeply perplexing. So I suppose the director wanted us to know just how strange everyone really is. I believe him.

"I wanted to be loved and the opposite happens".

[classicsoncall · 5/10 · 19 September 2016]

I watched this film in anticipation of what I thought might be a 2016 remake to be released in a few weeks as I write this. However the description of that film sounds like it will veer significantly from this one, with the trailers suggesting an element of mystery and possible horror.

This movie just left me cold. It seemed a pointless exercise to run young Jeanne (Emilie Dequenne) through the gamut of experiences here only to have her try to deal with it all by making up a phony story about being attacked. It got to the point where I thought there was an element of mental illness involved with her self disfigurement and lying to authorities. She wasn't even very good about it as a thirteen year old boy saw right through it and asked her point blank - "Why do you tell lies?"

Perhaps there was some profound element in the story line that this viewer missed, but this idea of a movie simply ending with no resolution is one I find to be terribly frustrating. Particularly when most of the performances were entirely credible and intriguing enough to suggest a worthwhile story, but in the end there was nothing to it.

Amusing, but it probably wasn't meant that way

[nlmark · 5/10 · 1 July 2009]

I just watched this film in the cinema, and I got to say, at the end I was walking out of the cinema with a big smile on my face. Not because I had seen a very good movie, but rather because I found the sheer randomness of the narrative pretty funny.

The movie tries to give a psychological motivation for the actions of its protagonist Jeanne, but what it actually accomplishes is very a fragmented sketch of Jeanne's life. There seems to be some causality in the narrative, but nowhere is there real motivation for the plot events. A lot of loose ends are left untied, and I kind of wondered why some things were even shown.

The film style is sloppy and unimaginative. The director tries to establish a motif by repeatedly showing shots involving a metro, but the shots don't really fit well and its only purpose seems to be to remind us of what the movie is about (if you knew before going to see the movie). The editing is fragmentary and mediocre, the cinematography seems okay.

I wouldn't really recommend seeing this film, though as I said before, I did enjoy myself, if not really for the reason I was supposed to.

Journey to Liberation in a World of Lies

[tigerfish50 · 8/10 · 10 August 2010]

'The Girl on the Train' is graced with a sensitive performance by Emilie Dequenne in the lead role as Jeanne. As her story unfolds, it reveals how life's apparent randomness conceals deeper patterns. At the outset, Jeanne is a roller-blading enthusiast living with her mother in the suburbs of Paris. Looking for work, Jeanne applies for a position with a Jewish lawyer, Bleistein, a former admirer of her mother's - but she prepares badly, tells fibs and is caught out. After this setback, Jeanne impulsively hooks up with a roller-blading tattooed wrestler, Frank, and they soon become lovers.

Some time later a friend of Frank's asks the pair to house-sit an apartment above his electronics business while he's away on vacation. Unknown to Jeanne, the business is a drug-dealing front and Frank is in on the deal. Before too long, Frank is seriously wounded by a buyer, and as a consequence the two lovers are both arrested. Despite facing a long sentence, Frank convinces the police of Jeanne's innocence - but blames her for his bad luck and coldly ends their relationship. Jeanne's response to this rejection is somewhat extreme. She gives herself some shallow cuts and daubs a Nazi swastika on her body in a mirror, before claiming that she'd been mistaken for a Jew, and attacked by some anti-semitic thugs. Her story creates a press sensation, but soon falls apart when the police scrutinize her account. Jeanne stubbornly refuses to recant, so her mother contacts Bleistein to help clear up the mess. The two women pay a visit to the lawyer's country home, and after a stormy night of self-examination, Jeanne decides to face the music - whereupon she receives a light sentence and roller-blades off into an unknown future.

Director Techine punctuates the action with imagery of trains and roller-blades - the trains speeding doggedly through the suburbs on their way to fixed destinations - whereas Jeanne meanders through parks on her roller-blades, her life lacking both direction and goal. 'The Girl on the Train' should be interpreted as an esoteric parable of liberation. Jeanne is imprisoned by time and place, but she's on the verge of freedom. She lives in a world where everybody lies to her for their own convenience or advantage - and her alienation from society is a reflection of her discomfort with its pervasive mendacity. She has become infected with this sickness - and what is destroying her, must be the cure. Using the same strategy as Sarah Woodruff in 'The French Lieutenant's Woman', Jeanne marks herself with blood and a sacred symbol (a Sanskrit swastika) for her rite of passage, and then fabricates an absurd racist assault in order to disgrace herself - knowing she will be disbelieved and dishonored - thereby liberating herself from society's norms. By the film's conclusion Jeanne has swapped roles with the Jewish lawyer - a bourgeois outsider with his family torn apart by disputes over empty rituals - and transformed herself into the wandering Jew of her unbelievable tale. She has been through the fire, acknowledged her mistakes, accepted her penance and is roller-blading through life armed with self-realization. She has vanquished her lower self, and become one of Joseph Campbell's Heroes with a Thousand Faces.

Girl Interrupted... Rollerblading

[Scroobious · 3/10 · 23 July 2010]

This movie consists of scenes of a girl Rollerblading, occasionally interrupted by a failed attempt at storyline and character study. Before, or better if, you read any further: Don't Waste Your Time.

This movie was 102 Minutes, but honestly felt double that length. The whole thing stunk, but here come the specific aspects of reek. We are never given any motivation for the "true event" culmination this movie is based around. There are peripheral stories and characters that are useless to plot development and uninteresting. It's slow, it goes nowhere and if I hadn't been watching it with other people I would have shut it off about 3/4s of the way through.

I think there is still a contingent of American people out there that believe foreign equals complex and innovative. Watch this Rollerblading commercial called a movie and you'll realize that merde is merde in any language. (Look it up).

The Crap On The Screen

[writers_reign · 4/10 · 3 October 2013]

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.

The girl on the train

[sandover · 22 May 2010]

André Téchiné's newest film The Girl on the Train is a combination topical expose and sophisticated melodrama. Using a real-life case where Alice (Emilie Dequenne), a girl from a banlieu outside Paris lied about being the victim of a bias attack, Téchiné takes the emotional pulse of hate crimes and finds symptoms of common psychological distress. In other words, it's a love story from the uniquely expansive—and inquiring—point of view that makes Téchiné France's most fascinating contemporary filmmaker.

The first sight of Alice rollerskating through the streets, thick curly hair surrounding her stolid face, presents a "normal" Téchiné youth—complex, enigmatic, hypersensitive to the world. Alice's place in the universe, and her politically incorrect actions, recall the troubled boy in the 1987 Scene of the Crime where Téchiné evoked the template of Great Expectations to explore how one character's fortune linked to and revealed a larger, social view of destiny.

Pondering Alice's emotional life when she falls in love with a young wrestler, Franck (Nicolas Duvauchelle), takes Techine beneath the surface stability of other characters. Alice's mother Louise (Catherine Deneuve) was a nonconformist now settled by maternity and unsettled by encountering an old acquaintance, Jewish activist Samuel Bleistein (Michel Blanc). Techine intermixes these histories and on-going fates; his quick, graceful pace, piercing insight and visual flair are perfectly symbolized in Alice's rollerskating sprees. One is constantly propelled and dazzled.

Alice's heterosexual female story keeps Téchiné several leaps ahead of one's expectations—and especially the intellectualized gay-ghetto preoccupations of his sex-and-psychology protégé Jacques Nolot (Before I Forget, Porn Theatre).

The contrasts between Alice and Louise, Bleistein and Franck vividly illustrate the common effort to achieve satisfaction and strength. For Téchiné, race, class and gender give access to understanding this constant struggle. His post-modern approach, through Dickens, Lean, even the Dardennes brothers (Dequennes is best known for their film Rosetta) remains unsentimental about obdurate human nature. And for those further intrigued by these mysteries of love and character and society—and their authenticity—an honorary soundtrack to the emotions Téchiné uncovers in The Girl on the Train can also be found in every track of Morrissey's Years of Refusal.

Insipid Crap

[ragavacharyar · 1/10 · 21 July 2010]

This movie is basically pointless. I was drawn in by the storyline only to find that the movie meanders on for some 80-85 minutes or so in the 'les circonstances' except that there really aren't a lot of circumstances that add up to what the protagonist does. Afterward, the protagonist cuts herself a little, draws a few swastikas on herself and says she's been a victim of a hate crime. Her mom knows its not true as her daughter, the protagonist, claims she was attacked because the lawyer Blestein's card was found in her bag (it turns out that Blestein didn't believe in business cards and didn't print any). Then Blestein and the girl's mom try to get the daughter to confess to what she had done. She does, gets a suspended sentence and is seen rollerblading again. What a pointless movie.

Consequences or Truth

[gradyharp · 8/10 · 10 August 2010]

André Téchiné's 'The Girl on the Train' (La fille du RER) focuses on a naive girl Jeanne (Émilie Dequenne) who fabricates a story about being attacked on a suburban Paris train by black and Arab youths who supposedly mistook her for a Jew. The story is based on a real event that took place in France in 2004, adapted for the stage by Jean-Marie Besset as 'RER', and written for the screen by Besset, Odile Barski, and director Téchiné. Téchiné, stating that 'the story became the mirror of all French fears, a revelation of what we call the 'collective unconscious.' How an individual's lie is transformed into truth with respect to the community at large and its fears', 'The Girl on the Train' dissects the psychological circumstances and consequences surrounding a bold lie in a rich drama, concentrating on the permutations such an act has one all concerned.

Jeanne lives with her single mother Louise (Catherine Deneuve) who manages the family finances as a childcare provider. Jeanne spends the greater part of her time roller skating and it is on one of her excursions that she meets the rather mysterious Franck (Nicolas Duvauchelle), a young wrestler who immediately attempts to win Jeanne's attention and affection despite Jeanne's insecurities. They eventually respond to the mutual chemistry and Franck searches for a way to help Jeanne out of financial difficulties: they become caretakers in a warehouse home, which is unbeknownst to Jeanne, a drug trafficking site. An incident occurs when a 'buyer' shows up and Franck is stabbed in defending his caretaker job and Jeanne's future. Jeanne is distraught but when she visits Franck in the hospital, Franck blames Jeanne for his bad luck and rebuffs her - he must now serve prison time for his involvement in the drug game.

Now, torn between her loss of money, her new 'home', and the love of Franck, Jeanne plans a manner of striking back: she slices her skin, clips her hair, and paints swastikas on her abdomen and reports that she has been attacked by anti-Semites. Louise seeks the assistance of an old flame who is now the important Jewish lawyer Samuel Bleistein (Michel Blanc) - man with whom Jeanne had unsuccessfully interviewed for a job - and what Louise thought would be a protection for both Franck and Jeanne results in Jeanne's confession that she fabricated the entire incident, a factor that disrupts the lives of all those affected by the lie, especially the family of Bleistein already teetering on disintegration due to the rocky marriage of his son and daughter-in-law and the preparation for the grandson's contested Bar Mitzvah.

Téchiné knows how to take seemingly ordinary people and circumstances and show the profound effect of evil wherever it raises its head. The film is enhanced by the verismo photography by Julien Hirsch and the apropos musical score by Philippe Sarde. While this film is not quite up to the standards of Téchiné's films such as 'Wild reeds', 'My Favorite Season', 'Changing Times' or 'Strayed', it still maintains that realistic surface beneath which lies the real grit of life. In French with English subtitles.

Grady Harp

Stabbings, lies, and a bar mitzvah

[Chris Knipp · 8/10 · 6 March 2009]

This Téchiné "issue" film is based on an actual news story of a young woman who pretended to have suffered an anti-Semitic attack on an RER (Réseau Express Régional) train that connects Paris with the surrounding regions. The story was originally adapted for the theater by Jean-Marie Besset and watching Besset's play gave Téchiné the idea for this quickly-shot film.

There's much to like, not least of which is a cast that includes Francophone mega-stars Michel Blanc and (Téchiné regular) Catherine Deneuve (as old friends) and lively young actors Nicolas Duvauchelle (of 'Les corps impatients') and Emilie Dequenne (star of the Dardenne brothers' Rosetta. This director is always good at juggling social levels and relationships (see Les Voleurs). But the subject matter seems forced and not super-relevant, a problem also of The Witnesses, but this time the issues arise in a way that makes them seem much less urgent than the AIDS crisis. Why does Jeanne (Dequenne) make up this story? What are its ramifications for actual Jews victimized by anti-Semites--and for the level of anti-Semitism in Europe and the world today? To what extent are individuals more victimized than ever by media invasions of privacy? These aren't questions that get sufficiently explored, either on a personal or a collective level. As a result viewers will experience a complicated set of characters they care about only intermittently, and a central event whose motivation is too vague to make it emotionally involving.

Jeanne lives with her mother Louise (Deneuve) in a house with a garden in the suburbs of Paris very near the RER line. They get along really well. Louise earns a living minding children. Jeanne is looking for work, but not very energetically. Louise reads a web notice one day that gives her the fantasy that she can get Alice a job working for a famous lawyer, Samuel Bleinstein (Blanc), whom she knew when they were very young. Jeanne gets an interview. It's not very promising. But she and Louise are going to get plenty of quality time with Bleinstein after Jeanne's lie comes out.

Before that, an online meeting: Jeanne connects in a chat-room with Frank (Duvachelle), a tattooed martial arts champion whose background may be dodgier than she realizes, but who is clearly more motivated than her because of his credible pro-sport ambitions. Jeanne and Frank have a roller-blade date and hit it off pretty fast. Before long Jeanne's not only sleeping over with Frank but sharing the responsibility of minding a mysterious electronics warehouse whose owner is away. It turns out the warehouse holds something other than electronics, and Frank's uncooperativeness with some gangster types causes him to wind up in the hospital with a potentially fatal stab wound. Frank, who has already been troubled by Jeanne's habit of lying, decides his involvement with her isn't good for either of them. It's in the wake of Frank's rejection that Jeanne cuts herself and paints on swastikas with a felt pen, then goes to the police with an invented story of being assaulted on the RER. by racist anti-Semites.

Somewhat to Jeanne's shock, her story arouses an immediate and rapidly metastasizing media frenzy. She is soon forced to admit her lie. This gets her in trouble with the law. This in turn leads Louise to call on her old friend Samuel, whom she's newly aware of from finding the job at his office on the Internet. We get scenes of Samuel's extended family, a Jewish family, whose members are debating over the coming bar mitzvah of young Nathan. (The young actor has a strong presence; I can't find his name in the casting list. But his father Alex is played by Mathieu Demy and his mother Judith by the vivid Ronit Elkabetz.) 'La fille du RER' (film's French title) is meant to creep up on you. Perhaps to avoid being stamped "thriller" or "crime story," but also to show how violence can pop up unexpectedly in what seem everyday lives, it meanders for an hour before Frank's stabbing. Throughout, the film explores semi-chance interconnections of different people with complex family ties--and some, like Frank, who're estranged from any family--in a world where violence can strike all of a sudden, and is so ever-present it becomes a tool to be used by a young woman to get attention. In her search for identity--missing perhaps due to the absence of her father and the lack of any commitment to work--Jeanne seeks an artificial identity in pretending to be Jewish and a victim of violence. As Stephen Holden notes in his 'NYTimes' Rendez-Vous roundup, "Mr. Téchiné shows his special empathy for the ways youthful impatience can trigger impulsively self-destructive behavior." For young Nathan, identity is being presented on a silver platter in the traditional coming-of-age ritual of a bar mitzvah.

Julien Hirsch is responsible for the film's bright, beautiful look. Costume designer Radija Zeggai gets the credit one assumes, for Deneuve's wonderfully frumpy-chic outfits.

The film is scheduled for French release March 18, 2009. Its showing in the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at Lincoln Center is its world premiere.

Yet another underrated film by Techine

[philosopherjack · 15 March 2024]

Yet another underrated film by the almost brutally undervalued Andre Techine, La fille du RER has been typically summed up in sensationalistic terms: a young woman, Jeanne, falsely claims she was attacked on a train by an anti-Semitic gang, causing a brief national sensation. The opening titles with their marching-to-battle vibe seem to lay the groundwork for something correspondingly confrontational, but from then on, Techine in typical fashion confounds expectations, sowing much mystery as to the film's basic nature and purpose. Among other things, the incident in question doesn't even arise until the film's second half, and hardly seems rooted in what came before it; almost or literally no one who knows Jeanne believes her story and it fairly rapidly falls apart; and Jeanne isn't even Jewish. Her ex-boyfriend brands her as a compulsive liar, but really only has one example to support that; he blames her for his taking a shady job that lands him in jail, but the film shows how he aggressively pursues her into being with him, her role in the relationship a relatively passive one, almost a blank canvas on which men might project their desires; at the end of the film she's become a fantasy love object for a much younger boy, a teenager. Despite the title, the defining recurring image isn't of Jeanne on the train but rather on roller blades, defined by pure movement, shimmering with undefined possibility; it resonates against Techine's fascination with the mysteries of relationships, ranging here from unrealized hints of a romance between Jeanne's mother (Catherine Deneuve) and an old beau who's now a prominent lawyer, to the lawyer's son and his estranged wife, veering within seconds from hostility to passionate reconciliation. The film carries an additional charge in the wake of the October 7, 2023 attacks and the subsequent spike in protest and debate, particularly in its implied caution against under-analyzed position-taking and tribalism.