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The Girl on the Train
We'll never know
2009
Review: February 9, 2010
Director: Andre Techine
Starring: Emilie Dequenne, Catherine Deneuve, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Michel Blanc
If you like, totally not necessary.
THE SETUP:
Fictionalized account of a famed case in which a French girl enflamed racism by falsely claiming to be the victim of an anti-Semitic attack.
DISCUSSION:
I am always drawn to see Andre Techine movies, and although I rarely walk out of them saying “That was GREAT!” I usually walk out satisfied, and they linger in the mind. I was also noting, during this film, that while my movie notes most often consist of specifics like “She stabs the mutant in the eye” or “Her mother had an affair with the Arch-Diocese,” my notes for elliptical French films like this are usually on the order of “She waters the plants on a rainy day” or “She dances in her room while the colors are desaturated,” and I have to keep writing everything down and only later piece together what may have been significant. This film is a fictionalized version of a real event: this young girl, who is not Jewish, claimed to have been attacked by a number of youths, swastikas scrawled on her body, her hair cut and skin sliced while no one on the train came to help. This enflamed already-smoldering tensions in France, which was roiled by a number of real anti-Semitic attacks. This one got the attention of the President and became a national sensation—until it was revealed to all be a lie. But, like most French films, this one doesn’t present an “answer” or even suggest an explanation one can walk away with. Unless it is to say: Rollerblading was the culprit.
We open with credits as we rocket through a French subway tunnel. Then we meet our main character, Jeanne, as she listens to loud music on her headphones. She does nothing but listen to her music and stare vacantly ahead. We then have a chapter title: 1: Circumstances.
Jeanne arrives home, where her mother Louise, played by Catherine Deneuve [how CAN she still look so fabulous? At 67?] is looking through job listings for Jeanne, who doesn’t seem interested. The job is a secretarial thing for this lawyer Lousie knew in the past [they had a youthful affair] who is now a high-powered lawyer, Bleistein. He appears on TV and is known for defending Jews in French anti-Semitic attacks. Louise asks Jeanne to let her write the cover letter for her. Jeanne doesn’t seem the least bit interested.
We periodically divert to the Bleisteins, which shows us his estranged son returning home, tetchily encountering his father and ex-wife, Judith, who has commandeered control of their young son, Nathan. Judith also supplies Bleistein with notes of what to and not to say on television, for example to stay away from the holocaust, as it makes Jews seem insensitive to others’ pain. The adult son, Alex, is in town for Nathan’s Bar Mitzvah. Nathan seems fascinated with the African sculptures his grandfather collects, but is told not to touch them.
Meanwhile Jeanne is pursued by Franck, who woos her by fast-talking a shopdealer into giving her a bag she likes at steep discount. He keeps at her until she agrees to see him more and more. They have a webcam chat in which our camera slowly diverts away from their faces to their bodies as their words appear across the screen. It is inexplicably tense and memorable. In fact, all of these scenes with Jeanne have an uncanny tension. It hints at coming to a head when Jeanne goes to Franck’s dorm and meets his roommate, who says they share everything—including girls. Then Franck locks the door and orders Jeanne to strip. She is justly worried—and after a moment they say “Just kidding!” But the menace and unease is enduring.
At a certain point Jeanne goes into an interview at Bleistein’s office. The woman interviewing her justly points out that she has no applicable skills, and that it’s obvious someone else has written large portions of her cover letter. When she asks Jeanne what skills she can bring to the position, Jeanne says “I can do anything.” Which, as I’m sure you know, means she can do nothing and will require tons of hand-holding. Yet despite all this Jeanne seems somewhat incensed that they won’t give her a job. She later lies and tells Franck that she has the job. At one point we see Bleistein on TV, discussing the rash of anti-semitic attacks by black youths that are becoming ever-more common in France.
Franck is a well-regarded college wrestler, and has multiple tattoos. He has lunch with Jeanne and Louise, to introduce them, where he is just slightly too aggressive—a fact Louise notices. He asserts that as a rising wrestler, he’s a really good catch. He insists on ordering a cigar, additional drinks and desserts after lunch, and paying for it all. He arranges for he and Jeanne to live together and make money as caretakers to an electronics shop. The live together for a short time, during which time things to be going well, but maintain an eerie tension. If the situation seems a little funny, it is, and things do not end well. Franck ends up calling her a liar and an airhead. Jeanne ends up moving back in with her mother.
Things continue, and one day Jeanne draws swastikas on her belly, makes very superficial scratches on her face and arms, cuts part of her hair, and sneaks out of the house. Now it’s part 2: Consequences. She spends the night away from home, having gone to the police and telling them that she was attacked by six black men who found Bleistein’s card on her, assumed she was Jewish, and cut her, drawing the swastikas. She said no one else on the train helped her. We don’t see her making the claim, we just see Louise and Jeanne’s return home. Soon the story is blowing up all over France and becoming a media sensation, prompting statements from French President Chirac and moving Ariel Sharon to urge all French Jews to come to Israel.
The movie takes an unexpected by interesting turn, although it never, ever offers any sort of pat explanation of what caused Jeanne to tell the lie. And until the end of the movie [and afterward], you’re left trying but unable to put it all together. Only gradually afterward, little occurrences and resonances start to form into patterns, and you start to form an idea in your mind of what might have happened. One example of the way things kind of resonate is that we see, on several occasions, African art that Bleistein collects and has displayed. We learn that the people who most often attack Jews in France are North Africans. Bleistein is heavily involved in representing Jews in such attacks. Are his sculptures a way for him to feel that he has domesticated or aestheticized the Africans? The movie never says, it just leaves you to think about it and ponder.
The things that end up sticking out for me are Jeanne’s blank, narcissistic gaze, and the long, repeated shots of her rollerblading. Emilie Dequenne does an excellent job of putting Jeanne across as very simple, self-centered person without going too far, or being afraid that people might confuse herself with her character. As we see Jeanne listening to loud, vacuous pop music and just staring straight ahead—not even reading a book or magazine—or rollerblading with her headphones on, she begins to seem perfectly self-satisfied in her state, with no recognition that it could be possible anyone might find anything lacking in her. This is reinforced by the scene in which she seems bewildered that Bleistein won’t give her a job, despite the fact that she has no skills whatsoever [this thread provides another avenue for her possible motivation]. When Franck calls her an airhead, it has impact because that’s what we have been thinking for a while as well.
Here is an article that describes the real case. Here are pictures of the real girl involved in the case—I guess that blank stare didn’t come out of nowhere. It turns out in the real case, the woman in question said she told the inflammatory lie because she wanted her boyfriend to spend the day with her.
I think the movie to compare this to is Gus Van Sant’s Elephant, another film that imagines the circumstances leading up to a major national event [in that case, the Colombine killings] that refuses to supply one pat explanation for what might have been the cause [although the finger is pointed quite damningly at video games there]. Here, there really is NO answer given, and that’s part of what makes the movie so uncannily haunting. You try to draw together what you can, which parallels the experience of the people in France as the case was in the media—you use whatever knowledge you have and try to piece together your own answer from that.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
If you like elliptical French films.
