Film: The Girl On The Train
Release date: 27th September 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 102 mins
Director: André Téchiné
Starring: Émilie Dequenne, Michel Blanc, Catherine Deneuve, Mathieu Demy, Ronit Elkabetz
Genre: Drama
Studio: Soda
Format: DVD
Country: France
Directed by one-time film critic Andre Techine, The Girl On The Train was inspired by a real life scandalous event in France in 2004 and its resultant play. The film serves as an intriguing insight into the socio political culture of modern France, and the often complex and difficult nature of the family unit in French society.
Jeanne (Emilie Dequenne) is a 22-year-old woman struggling to get to grips with her life and her circumstances. As she continues to coast along living in her comfortable home, Jeanne’s childminder mother Louise (Catherine Deneuve) attempts to get Jeanne a job in the office of her former lover and renowned lawyer Samuel Bleistein (Michel Blanc).
Jeanne’s lack of sufficient qualities sees her badly fail in her interview, but, after an accidental meeting, she falls in the arms of her exciting and impulsive amateur wrestler boyfriend Franck (Nicolas Duvauchelle). Yet when Jeanne and Franck’s seemingly idyllic life together falls apart under shady circumstances (resulting in Franck’s arrest), Jeanne once again feels isolated and lost as Franck turns against her because of her naivety and flexibility with the truth of her circumstances.
Seeking attention and recognition, Jeanne pretends to be the victim of an anti-Semitic assault on a train by a gang of youths, cutting her hair and daubing swastikas and scratches over her body as ‘proof’ of the incident. However, as the story snowballs on a huge media scale amidst Jeanne’s claims that she was victimised due to carrying a business card of the Jewish lawyer Bleistein (she herself is not Jewish), Jeanne must ultimately face up to the dramatic consequences that her shocking lie has created for herself and those around her…
At the centre of the controversial claim of anti-Semitism, Emilie Dequenne as Jeanne reveals a want and desire to be noticed in a society that she seems to float through (often on rollerblades). Jeanne is an alluring yet frustrating character; a young woman who sees no option of changing her lack of prospects unless manipulating those around her into feeling sympathy for her.
Jeanne’s naivety means that she has no idea of the extent to which her story will be covered in the media and talked about across France. Within this central plot point in the film, Dequenne’s portrayal of Jeanne as an almost passive presence to events in her own life, before and during the resulting media storm of her extraordinary lie, is impressive. Yet The Girl On The Train is at its most interesting in the interplay between Jeanne and those closest to her, where this is most effective in her relationship with her boyfriend.
In the scenes where Jeanne moves in with Franck (Duvauchelle in an intriguing role with hidden depths), there is an element of unease and danger to the character’s fleetingly happy existence. Jeanne’s time with Franck reveals her passiveness and willingness to go along with what other people want for her, as she simply cannot fathom what she truly wants for herself. Jeanne’s traumatic break-up with Franck is the catalyst for her decision to lie about being the victim of an appalling anti-Semitic assault, where the strained relationship between Jeanne and her mother (who senses her daughter’s falsehood) in the wake of intense media scrutiny of the allegation feels deeply authentic.
However, it is in the film’s subplots surrounding Bleistein and his family that the film becomes rather unstuck. A hint of a relationship in the distant past between Catherine Denueve’s Louise and Michel Blanc’s Bleistein is only fleetingly engaging, and unfortunately pales in comparison to the relationship between Franck and Jeanne. Additionally, while Mathieu Demy and Ronit Elkabetz are decent performers in their roles as Bleistein’s estranged son and somewhat estranged daughter-in-law respectively, the segments of the film focusing on the straining family dynamics between them (a middle-upper class family cultivated by Bleistein’s success as a lawyer) feel like a fairly extraneous diversion from the film’s primary focus in Jeanne.
Despite this sense of misdirection, Techine does make some good parallels between Jeanne’s situation and Bleistein’s grandson Nathan (Jeremie Quaegebeur); tying in themes of race and identity present throughout the film. Jeanne uses Bleistein’s identity as a Jew in a desperate attempt for her own emotional gain, but in the scene where she admits her lie to Nathan, Jeanne begins to come to terms with the impact of her actions. Where Nathan (showing an astuteness beyond his years in second-guessing Jeanne’s story) is on the cusp of adulthood, and is about to celebrate his coming of age Bar Mitzvah, Jeanne is a confused young woman without a clear sense of who she wants to be. The scene between both characters serves as a turning point in the film, where Nathan is primed for adulthood in understanding the complexities of his elders, and Jeanne finally appears to accept the consequences of a situation she caused to become a more assured woman.
In the well portrayed central role, Emilie Dequenne demonstrates the angst and yearning for attention of a young woman willing to make an extremely shocking and visceral allegation of anti-Semitism in modern day France. Techine’s film provides insight into modern French society in the context of identity and family dysfunction, although some of the film’s subplots involving the lawyer Bleistein’s (Blanc) family fall a bit flat in comparison to the central relationships between Jeanne, her mother and her boyfriend. DB
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