The Girl on the Train

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ***½

André Téchiné is not given to spelling out his themes and connections -- not the theme nor the moral nor even sometimes the plot itself -- so you have to work to piece them together. It's usually worth the effort, however, and his latest, The Girl on The Train, is no exception. Class, prejudice, religion, violence, guilt and other of life's little delights rear their heads in odd ways throughout this very interesting, though perhaps not completely satisfying, film. Girl on The Train is based upon an incident that occurred some time back in France, but since that incident does not occur in the film itself until halfway through, there is no need to go into details here and set you up for something that ought to come more naturally, as a surprise.

What Téchiné is up to, I think, is getting us to better understand and care for his characters prior to the event itself, so by the time of the event and its aftermath, we can see things in a much wider, more inclusive manner than do the media, the politicians or anyone else involved -- including the perpetrator -- who cannot observe the entire situation as clearly as do we viewers. This is a difficult and unusual thing to pull off, and I am not sure the writer/director has accomplished it as fully as he might.

There's a combination of structure and restraint at work here that keeps the film from taking off as completely as have some other of Téchiné's films. This doesn't keep the film from being interesting, however, as Téchiné forces us to confront an event from a subtler yet broader perspective than we are used to seeing.

The key event happens late in the film, yet it packs such a wallop that, were it to occur in any other filmmaker's movie, it would set the entire tone as well as our view of the title character. That this does not happen is due to the director and co-writer (with Odile Barksy and Jean-Marie Besset) having earlier presented such a rich and full view of the world and the young woman -- played well, as she does all her roles, by Émilie Dequenne (so memorable in Rosetta). Consequently, viewers cannot perform the usual rush-to-judgment done by the media, politicians, even some of those people close to the girl and the event.

This alone makes the film worth seeing -- as does the cast assembled, which also includes Michel Blanc as a famous lawyer, and especially Nicolas Duvauchelle as Dequenne's alternately courageous and conflicted boyfriend.

Dequenne's mother is played by the French icon Catherine Deneuve, who continues to find, with the help of some of France's best directors (Téchiné, Desplechin, Ozon) interesting and varied roles to play well into her senior years.