La fille du RER (2009) Reviews

• Journey to Liberation through a World of Lies

  tigerfish502010-08-10

  A feckless young woman, Jeanne, lives with her mother in the suburbs of Paris and loves roller-blading. Looking for work, Jeanne applies for a position with an activist Jewish lawyer, Bleistein, a former admirer of her mother's - but she prepares badly, tells fibs to cover her shortcomings and is caught out. After failing to get the job, Jeanne impulsively hooks up with an edgy tattooed wrestler, Frank, who also loves roller-blading, and they soon become lovers. Some time later a friend of Frank's asks the pair to house-sit an apartment above his electronics warehouse while he's away on vacation, but unknown to Jeanne, the warehouse is a drug-dealing front and Frank is in on the deal. One day, while Jeanne is out, Frank is seriously wounded by a buyer, and as a consequence both of them are arrested. Despite facing a long sentence, Frank convinces the police of his girlfriend's innocence - but blames her for his bad luck and callously ends their relationship. Jeanne's response to this rejection is somewhat extreme. She gives herself some shallow cuts and daubs a Nazi swastika on her body in a mirror, before claiming that she'd been mistaken for a Jew, and attacked by some anti-semitic thugs. Her story creates a press sensation, but soon falls apart when the police scrutinize her account. Jeanne stubbornly refuses to recant, so her mother contacts Bleistein to help elicit a confession. The two women pay a visit to the lawyer's country home, and after a stormy night of self-examination, Jeanne decides to face the music - whereupon she receives a light sentence and roller-blades off into an unknown future. 'The Girl on the Train' is graced with a sensitive performance by Emilie Dequenne in the lead role. As Jeanne's story unfolds, it reveals how life's apparent randomness conceals deeper patterns. Techine punctuates the action with imagery of trains and roller-blades - the trains speeding doggedly across the suburban landscape on their way to fixed destinations - whereas Jeanne meanders through parks on her roller-blades, her life lacking both direction and goal. 'The Girl on the Train' should be interpreted as an esoteric parable of liberation. Jeanne is imprisoned by time and place, but she's on the verge of infinite freedom. She lives in a world where everybody lies to her for their own convenience or advantage - and her alienation from society is a reflection of her discomfort with its pervasive mendacity. She has become infected with this sickness - and what is destroying her, must be her cure. Using the same strategy as Sarah Woodruff in 'The French Lieutenant's Woman', Jeanne ritually marks herself with blood and a sacred symbol (a Sanskrit swastika) for her rite of passage, and then fabricates an absurd racist assault in order to disgrace herself - knowing she will be disbelieved and dishonored - thereby liberating herself from society's norms. By the film's conclusion Jeanne has swapped traditional roles with the bourgeois Jewish lawyer - his family disintegrating in disputes over empty rituals - and transformed herself into the wandering Jew of her unbelievable tale. She has been through the fire, acknowledged her sins, accepted her penance and is roller-blading through life armed with self-realization. She has conquered herself, and become one of Joseph Campbell's Heroes with a Thousand Faces.

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• Thought provoking and definitely worth seeing

  tacitus-707-6635492010-04-08

  I disagree with the negative reviewer, who I think missed the point. This film intentionally avoided telling the viewer what to think about the situation or characters in this film, forcing the viewer to come to his or her own conclusions, thereby provoking a lot of thought and discussion. I saw the film with my Jewish girlfriend, and we had completely different takes on the movie and its central character. My girlfriend thought the movie itself was anti-Semitic for its negative depiction of a broken Jewish marriage-- an impression I did not (and still don't) share. The film, based on actual events in Paris in 2006, is divided into two parts. The first part is entitled "The Circumstances" and tells the story of a 19-year-old girl and the affair she unthinkingly falls into with a young French wrestling star. They end up moving in together and he gets involved with a shady drug business, of which she is unaware. He is stabbed by a drug runner and arrested. She returns home to her mother (Catherine Deneuve). Unable to get a job, distraught over her disastrous relationship, the girl impulsively cuts herself, draws swastikas on her stomach, and tells the police she was attacked by a gang of 6 boys on a commuter train outside of Paris because they mistakenly thought she was Jewish (she is not) on the basis of a business card of a Jewish lawyer she said she had in her purse. The second part of the film is titled "The Consequences." The media pick up the story-- a development she hadn't apparently foreseen-- and her mother asks her friend, the Jewish lawyer, for advice. He advises her to bring her daughter to his country home, where he, his son and daughter in law, and their 13-year-old son, who is preparing for his Bar Mitzvah, are spending the weekend. Everyone at the house seems to understand immediately that her story is false, and they want to minimize the amount of trouble she will be in if she confesses. She ultimately admits that she made up the story and writes out a confession to that effect. The French judicial system lets her off easy, and that wraps up the film. But the viewer is left to grapple with unanswered questions. Why did she make up this story? She doesn't seem to have wanted attention, and seeks to avoid the media, whose interest seems to surprise her. With all its obvious holes and weaknesses, why did the police and the media believe the story? (She is, after all, not Jewish.) The film makes the point that anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise in France. Why then does the media focus on an obviously false report of an anti-Semitic attack in which the victim is not even Jewish? Give this film a chance. The filmmakers could have tried to answer all those questions for us, as most American directors would have done, but instead set their viewers the challenge of answering them for themselves. Ultimately, that decision made for a much more interesting movie-going experience.

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• Not what it is marketed as

  asc852010-05-30

  First of all, I have to say that I am positive about this film. But I'm not sure why this film is being marketed as one about a young woman who says she was attacked by minorities that creates a media frenzy. Sure, that happens in the movie, but it's towards the end, and doesn't even seem to me to be the primary thrust of the picture. To me, the film is about the adventures of a screwed-up young woman (well-played by the very pretty Emilie Dequenne) who can't find a job, moves in with a potentially dangerous young wrestler, gets involved in drugs, and, oh by the way, gives self-inflicted wounds to herself and creates a major controversy. I guess one of the reasons I liked this movie was because it told a story that I wasn't sure where it was going, but I didn't mind because the story was an extremely interesting one, that cut and cross-cut to different sub-plots and characters.

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• Frustrating, a key social theme diluted and squandered

  secondtake2010-07-12

  The Girl on the Train (2009) The hook that made this movie successful is not enough to make the movie good. The added plot in the first half fizzles and seems ultimately irrelevant. Yes, the main actress plays the part of an "airhead," as the subtitle translates her stupidity. But the movie itself has some of the same disease. It lacks formal intelligence, and it stretches out a few basic ideas over 105 minutes, posing as a serious movie with serious implications. Not that it's misery to watch. In a way, the fact that you get sucked in waiting and waiting for some basic conflict to formulate says something about the acting and editing. This is contemporary Paris, or a cozy, idealized side to it. And you can't dismiss the theme of anti-Semitism, which gets some elaboration and complexity as you go, including some great, if simplified, conversations between Jews at their country house about what it means to be a contemporary Jew. It's conveniently packaged, but adds some needed interest to the events. This leads eventually to a rather long and oddly placed bar mitzvah celebration, and some more roller blading filler. It's a frustrating thing to see all this content watered down by a single turn of events, the faked hate crime attack, which happens well past the halfway point of the movie. And around which the suspense of being fooled is left out of the movie, because we are told everything as it happens.

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• The girl behind the lie

  treeline12010-06-16

  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 story lines, 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.

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