Search - The Girl on the Train on DVD

Observing Other People's Lives

Amos Lassen | Little Rock, Arkansas | 02/08/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

""The Girl on the Train"

Looking at Other People's Lives

Amos Lassen

Andre Techine's new film, "The Girl on a Train" ("La fille du RER") is based on an actual incident of a young woman who pretended to have suffered an anti-Semitic attack on a train, the RER (Reseau Express Regional) that links Paris with its surrounding suburbs. It stars Michel Blanc and Catherine Deneuve and it looks at social levels and relationships.
Jeanne lives with her mother Louise (Deneuve) in a house in the suburbs of Paris. Louise minds children for a living and her mother is looking for work. One day, Louise reads something on the web that gives her an idea that she can get her daughter a job working for a famous lawyer, Samuel Bienstein (Blanc). She knew him when they were younger and when Jeanne gets an interview it does not look promising. Just before this Jeanne connects online with Frank (Nicolas Duvachelle), a martial arts champion with a dubious background. They begin to date and get somewhat serious. However Frank is aware that Jeanne is not always honest and when Frank rejects her she cuts herself and then goes to the police with a story she made up about being assaulted on the train by anti-Semites.
Of course the media grab hold of the story and Jeanne is soon forced to admit that she lied which of course will cause problems with the law. Louse then calls her friend Samuel and it is from this point that human relationships are really studied.
Techine is famous for looking at human experience and he shows us what happens when an issue becomes overheated and emotional. We learn about the construction of identity and he uses the woman's lie as a way to look at the circumstances and consequences of identity. Jeanne found that in order to gain attention she needed to become a scapegoat and one that would be embraced by French officials but she lied to do so and we see the result of that very clearly here.
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Circumstances and Consequences

prisrob | New England USA | 06/06/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This film is a character study of the mysteries of several lives. It is fiction, based on a true to life case of a young French woman who said she had been attacked on a train by neo-Nazi antisemites. After a bit she confessed she had made the whole thing up. It seems it is much easier to tell a lie than to maintain it.

Emilie Dequenne is Jeanne, who lives in the outskirts of Paris and is looking for a job as a secretary. Her mother Louise, played by Catherine Deneuve, cares for children. Louise understands the resumes written by Jeanne are full of spelling errors and badly written. But, Jeanne is independent and wants to find a job on her own. Her daily life consists of rollerblading and we are led to this exercise throughout the film. On one occasion, Jeanne meets a young tough man who is a wrestler.. They move in together and under secretive circumstances make a living. Jeanne is treated badly by this young man and left to find her own way. She is emotionally unable to handle the rejection and makes a tragic mistake.

The film is divided into two parts, circumstances and consequences, each has overlapping characters and themes. The first half describes Jeanne's relationship with her mother and her young man. The second half shows us a Jewish family, the Bleisteins. They become part of the story, as a background into Louise's young life. Mr. Bleistein is a lawyer and had a crush on Louise when she was a young married woman. Louise involves the family when she needs legal assistance for Jeanne. The Bleisteins are a complex, Jewish family with issues of their own. But they are helpful to Jeanne and Louise and in the process come to understand themselves a little more fully.

This is a film of psychological trauma and how we deal with our lot in life. The people who love us and those who care. As Jeanne said after she admitted lying, "I wanted my parents to take care of me, my boyfriend to take care of me." Her solution was to find a scapegoat that French officials could embrace even as they gave her the attention she so clearly craved." Guardian UK

Recommended. prisrob 06-06-10

Rosetta [VHS]


Belle de Jour"

The girl behind the lie

Kona | Emerald City | 06/17/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

"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 storylines 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. In French with English subtitles."

Consequences or Truth

Grady Harp | Los Angeles, CA United States | 08/10/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

"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, August 10"