Crossed Tracks

Greetings again from the darkness. Excellent bit of storytelling and film-making from French master Claude Lelouche. This one has a bit of trickery in its approach and will force you to pay attention to details as you get the story and characters straight.

With some similarities (but not quite at the level of) "Swimming Pool", this one crawls inside the mind of a novelist and we are treated to quite a ride! Magicians, Serial Killers, Runaway husbands, Suicide, Murder, Romantic affairs, Pig slaughter, Family quarrels ... well you get the idea. This one has much to offer and will keep your attention as you attempt to assemble all the pieces.

Very strong acting from Dominique Pinon as Laclos. Pinon is not in the Hollywood tradition of leading men, but he is fascinating to behold. Myriam Boyer as the female lead is very strong in her less than balanced character who tries desperately to please her mother. Fanny Ardant has the pivotal role of the famous novelist, Judith Ralitzer, whose next novel brings all the characters to the cross tracks.

If you enjoy a complicated, multi-faceted story line and some offbeat characters, then you will probably find the same level of enjoyment that I found.

"Roman De Gare" is Lelouch's best movie since his good comedy/thrillers of the seventies ("Le Voyou" "LE Chat Et La Souris" "LA Bonne Année".)

It must be the screenplay:for it does not present itself as typifying a new Lelouch approach;the group of people ,some of whom having a thin connection between them is as old as the hills in Lelouch's filmography from "Toute Une Vie" to "Les Uns ET Les Autres";the reality/fiction subject was already broached in "Edith And Marcel" a forerunner of "La Mome";Lelouch's fondness for French song is also to be found here (represented by a Gilbert Becaud mini-repertoire ,which has no real connection with the plot;in the past,it was Sacha Distel,Johnny Hallyday and ,yuk ,Mireille Mathieu.)The "things are not what they seem" topic was the main interest of the 1970 effort "le Voyou" and continued with such works as "Viva La Vie" .

And yet,the impression left by the movie as a whole is a definitely more balanced ,poised and modest Lelouch.Once this would have been thought a downright incongruity ,even an impossibility -the movie was first shown as a work made by an anonymous director - ,neither desirable nor likely.But now,it seems Lelouch is on the right track again.

Gone are the pretensions of the mammoth movies ,the likes of "Les Uns Et Les Autres" ;Gone is the blandness of psychological dramas such as "Et Si C'Etait A Refaire" ;instead the viewer rejoices in the presence of wonderful lines sometimes worthy of Guitry and Jeanson.I remember TRuffaut telling Lelouch "UN Homme Et Une Femme " was the best New Wave movie;terse answer by Lelouch :"I hate N.W" ;which was rebellious at the time at least artistically.

If an influence can be felt in "Roman De Gare" ,it's that of the superior old school.Long before Lelouch ,Julien Duvivier had invented the movie made of subplots which became a seamless whole in the end .It was obvious in "Sous Le Ciel De Paris" (1951).But the movie Lelouch borrows from is arguably the overlooked and largely ignored Duvivier's "La Fete A Henriette"(1952) in which two screenwriters play a part which Dominique Pinon's role recalls.Lelouch is no match for Duvivier, he has not got his pessimism ,and he adds a detective side ,but to mention Jeanson,Guitry or Duvivier in a Lelouch review indicates that the director can age gracefully.As historian Patrick Brion wrote "LA Fete A Henriette" was plundered (and remade three times,a record for a FRench movie).Lelouch did use some elements of the movie with care and talent.

A stellar cast gives the movie much substance:Dominique Pinon is the stand-out the only French actor who is both ugly and handsome ;Myriam Boyer is the crude peasant whose only obsession is that "her son-in-law believes in God.She proves herself smarter than she first appeared,noticing that the "Jew" eats pork and that this "physician cannot stand the sight of blood" .A short-haired Fanny Ardant is cast as a writer called Judith Ralitzer (a hint at "Pulitzer" or at the "Romans De Gare" of writer Paul Loup Sulitzer?).

Witty,funny and intriguing:if someone had told me I 'd like a Lelouch movie in the naughties....

A multifaceted story which - apart from being interesting, well filmed and well acted - keeps the spectator getting ideas about what is really happening, just to have those ideas destroyed a few minutes later. Everything is thrown in: personal stories, criminal events, the French publishing world, sex and romance in a complex and fascinating whirlpool that ensures that you'll pay close attention. Highly enjoyable film, which is and yet is not a "film noir". The main male character can be offputting, which is not surprising, considering that he might be - underline "might" - a serial killer. The female roles are very good, with Fanny Ardant in a superb performance. If you think you'd like an intriguing movie that requires you to think, don't miss it.

After the unfair successive failure of the aborted trilogy of "La Comédie Humaine", we thought that Claude Lelouch was broke for a long time whereas Roman de Gare is released less than 2 years after "le courage d'aimer", the second and final opus of the forecast trilogy. Shot in secret with a nom de plume, Roman de Gare recalls a little of the freshness of the Lelouch of the 60's, but also lacks of the grandeur we were used to: the image quality is pretty poor, the cast is not all stars, though Fanny Ardant, Truffaud's egerie is superb as usual, we feel Lelouch had really little money to shoot; not a great music as usual(late Gilbert Becaud was a respected French singer, but the choice of the songs does not highlight the scenes to my feelings), the story is centered on a murder story, but is actually a pretext to demonstrate once more the human and love relations that the director is famous to be a passionate of. Not the greatest Lelouch, but not boring either due mainly to an unusual funny script and a pretty good acting.

Roman de gare is a very complex film that begins almost too convoluted, but ends on a perfect note of closure. A story about a man on a journey for research on his next book becomes a visualization of the same suspense aspects he is manifesting in his head for the novel. We as an audience are hard-pressed to decide whether this man is truly a writer, a teacher who has left his school and family behind, an escaped serial killer magician, or, yes, God himself. Much like the soon to be lead role in his latest masterpiece of fiction, he actually becomes each one, playing the parts at just the right time until we finally see how everything that occurs has been orchestrated by his actions. It is not that he meant for it all to happen, no, chance and fate played a part as well. However, when all is said and done, Pierre Laclos has put his hands to the dough and molded a series of events in the real world to mirror the freedom he has in his mind when composing his thrillers. An unlikely God, Laclos takes himself seriously for once and decides to step out of the shadows that have been shrouding him for too long. The ghost is ready to take shape.

The first twenty minutes or so of this film can be quite disorienting. Timelines jump and characters appear and disappear making way for a completely different set of people to take center stage. What is shown becomes so oddly juxtaposed that I began to think this was to be a sort of Lynchian piece, showing multiple planes of reality, maybe even visualizing the novel in conjunction with the author's search for inspiration. The fact that we are introduced to the celebrated writer Judith Ralitzer straight away, talking about her new novel God, The Other, yet are soon whisked to meet Laclos as he travels just after the release of her previous book, confusing us as to where we are in time, begins to make us question what is real and what is not. Allusions to a killer magician and the disappearance of a woman's husband plant the seeds that our hero Laclos could be some sort of nefarious creature, playing a role with the young woman he kindly drives home after her blowup with her fiancé. Maybe this is the man that abandoned his family, or maybe he is the killer that murdered said man and took his identity, or maybe still he is neither and just a pawn in the hands of the filmmaker. My mind was racing trying to work out what might be happening, but thankfully as the story progresses, these questions are answered, every single thread finds a connection to each other—and not in the simple ways you assume they will—and the tale hits its stride as it sticks to one present time until finding its way back to the beginning of the film, which in reality is the end of the story.

That last convoluted paragraph might have your mind reeling now before you even experience the film itself, but rest assured, it all does make sense. Roman de gare isn't some trite piece with its only goal being to manipulate and confuse, no, it does have a place it wants to go to and eventually reaches that destination. Every move is carefully orchestrated and infuses a lot of humor with the dark subject matter being portrayed. When you hear the description that will be used for the back of the book jacket of God, The Other, just remember it because I could have probably copied those words down here and it would have served perfectly as a review of the film. Because in essence, the novel being written as the movie goes on is the movie itself. Like that scene in Spaceballs when they decide to watch the movie they are in and eventually find themselves on a live feed as they fast-forwarded too far—that is this film. What is shown to us is what is written in the book, even that which happens after its publishing. It is the perfect crime in double.

Writer/director Claude Lelouch has crafted a very special thing here, always keeping the viewers on their toes, surprising even when it is obvious what will happen next. I will admit to never having heard of this former Oscar winning screenwriter, but suffice it to say, he has been added to my consciousness to try a seek his previous and future work. The story is what really succeeds, but it couldn't have done it without a really well versed cast. Fanny Ardent is great as Ralitzer, conniving and persuasive, you can never tell what she is capable of and in some instances aren't given the opportunity to find out as other characters are one step ahead of her; Audrey Dana is gorgeous and affecting as Huguette, the heroine of the film and novel alike; and Dominique Pinon is wonderful as always playing Laclos, stealing the show with his affable charm and kind heart—no one plays the ordinary man alive with life better. A common face amongst the work of auteur Jenuet, Pinon shows that he can carry a movie and hopefully will continue to do so in the years to come.