Ceux qui m'aiment prendront le train

Twice as ambitious as an Altman ensemble yet half as accessible, this lurid drama from the French director of Queen Margot begins at full-speed-ahead and hardly slows down thereafter.

The film follows a disjointed, motley crew as they travel by train to the funeral of a condescending painter they all once loved. Director Chereau has enough faith in his ideas to incite scenes of tortuous incoherence, most in the first 20 minutes, but when the dust settles the film develops into a character-driven masterpiece in which every scene is the big one.

The ensemble is superb, especially Jean-Louis Trintignant as both the painter and his brother, and the Americanized-in-vain Vincent Perez, back in his homeland where he belongs as a sharp-tongued transsexual.

Hard to avoid the Wellesian overtones here which begins with a death and goes on to explore the impact of the dead man not so much on the upper-case World as in Kane but on his own lower-case world as a fairly respectable number of those whose lives he touched travel to and assemble at his childhood home in Limoges. Amazingly one of the comments I've just read suggested that next time around the director employ a scriptwriter. This comment displays an ignorance verging on the colossal given that Daniele Thompson, who co-wrote the script from her own Original idea, is one of the outstanding screenwriters in French cinema having started with a classic 'Le Grand Vadrouille' at the age of 24 and progressing through such well-received titles as Le Follies de Grandeur, La Reine Margot until she began - with La Buche - to direct her own screenplays. Be that as it may the script is right up there with the best as are the performances not least the ever luminescent Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi whose performance alone is reason enough to see this. Okay, there are strong elements of homosexuality because it's inevitable that homosexuals are very much a presence in the modern world. As a heterosexual I wouldn't have a great deal if any at all interest in out-and-out homosexual films, literature or plays but neither did the homosexual content here bother/disturb me because it was shown in context within a highly complex, swiss-movement be-jewelled story. One that bears repeated viewings.

They all loved him. Jean Louis Trintignat is the focus of their love. He is dead. Love is not. The shape, light and nature of one's love for another changes from character to character. I was riveted by that puzzle that love usually implies. And Vincent Perez? Where is he? I kept waiting for him to appear in all its unbearable beauty. The film was almost over and no sign of Perez. But, I was rapidly falling in love with a young woman I had never seen before on the screen. She is not just a superb actress but a monumental beauty. Hold on a minute. I think I've seen her before. God almighty! It's Vincent Perez! Among the many delightful, thoughtful surprises of this, unusual, french import is Vincent Perez as a girl. If you let the film happen and you don't fight it. You are going to have a wonderful experience.

A drama queen's wet dream. It offers up a magnificent, almost epic gloss of the melodrama of at least 14 characters. The problem is that with a Robert Altman-sized cast crammed into 2 hours (Altman would take 3 or more), and screen time distributed more or less democratically, it's hard to get to know the characters--but some are very compelling anyway. The film is narrated and edited ridiculously, as if a novel had been tossed into a blender. Most scenes feel like they're less than a minute long yet are packed with dialogue. You might wonder if the filmmakers are trying to obscure script problems by making routine exposition an unusual chore.

However, the film's melodrama is presented in a lushly dark, romantic, Gallic way. There's something heady about the experience. And the film has some extraordinary settings. The cemetery is one of the most stunning locations since Scarlet O'Hara walked through the endless Confederate dead. And the train, crowded and zipping through the French countryside, is metaphoric in an undeniably physical way. Since Americans don't support public transportation, esp. trains, this experience struck me as unique.

I saw it three times in a theater, and on DVD far too many times to count. I can't recall a film that has touched me so deeply. Maybe it's the way it encapsulated every funeral I've been to over the past ten years (and believe me, there have been a lot of them.) Maybe it's the way it reflected gay life as I've known it -- which is not one in which the imitation-straight couple rules (as in that pathetic HRC March on Washington), but rather consists of a complex network of friends and lovers. Just as Chereau's "L'Homme Blesse" captured coming out as I experienced it, so does this film deal with middle-age, loss, and regret. Part of what makes it so exceptional is that Chereau refuses to privilege straights in the narrative. For once THEY are the ones who have to explain themselves. Gayness is a given. It's hard to speak of "big scenes" in a film that gives you one after another. But the one in which the mourners watch the coffin go by in a car as Jeff Buckley's "The Last Goodbye" plays on the soundtrack has got to be one of the finest of modern cinema. And the finale, where Francois (Pascal Greggory) says goodbye to everyone without saying a word breaks my heart every time.