The Girl on the Train

2009
6| 1h45m| en
Details

The Girl on the Train is a 2009 French drama film directed by André Téchiné. Jeanne is a young woman, striking but otherwise without qualities. Her mother tries to get her a job in the office of a lawyer, Bleistein, her lover years ago. Jeanne fails the interview but falls into a relationship with Franck, a wrestler whose dreams and claims of being in a legitimate business partnership Jeanne is only too happy to believe. When Franck is arrested, he turns on Jeanne for her naivety; she's stung and seeks attention by making up a story of an attack on a train. Is there any way out for her?

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Reviews

Blucher One of the worst movies I've ever seen
Dotbankey A lot of fun.
Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.
Staci Frederick Blistering performances.
Scroobious 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).
ragavacharyar 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.
sandover 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.
nlmark 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.

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