J'attendrai le suivant...

"I'll wait for the next one" is a short film released in 2002 and shot in France. The main character is a woman who has no boyfriend or husband and feels so alone that she follows a couple passing her on the escalator to the metro platform with her eyes. On the train she boards, a young man introduces himself and starts to give a speech about how he is looking for love. She is interested in what the young man has to say and listens with a smile.

Although the film has dialogue, it is very interesting that the main character has no dialogue and expresses her emotions through her facial expressions.

As well as the changes in the woman's facial expressions, the film also shows the reactions of other passengers on the same train to the young man's speech, which I felt made it easier to understand the woman's emotions through the contrast.

A lonely woman goes on about her life until one day, the ride on her usual train takes an unexpected turn, changing her life in the mere span of a few minutes.

It's a well-crafted short, from start to finish. The actress does a magnificient job showing the sad, lonely side of the character, which makes the audience take a liking on her earlier in the short. There's humour in it too, and the cadence of the dialogue makes the audience follow the slow but steady flow of the plot.

The simplicity and familiarity of the setting (coming home from work, getting on the train to share your personal space with strangers for as long as the ride lasts) adds to showing how easily events in the short could happen in real life. How humans can be cruel without meaning to, and how they can also be very naive when hope is an option.

The naiveness of the woman, her hope to finally stop feeling lonely, is what gives this short that special touch.

Oh, this broke my heart! The filmmaker showed such skill as he told the story of the woman on the train with no words whatsoever. The actress was great. She just really brought to life her loneliness, from her buck teeth to her terrible scarf. She was just trying so hard. This was super-great. Except it was a bit devastating in the end...

Quite literally an emotional ride, "I'll Wait for the Next One" offers the promise of a fateful encounter only to be challenged abruptly by a surprise ending. The surprise works because our feelings are channeled through the eyes of the woman, whom in becoming the dupe of the male perpetrator forces viewers along to share in her struggle. The film thus raises many questions regarding the nature of the conflict it depicts: why is it not surprising that the man is the perpetrator and the woman is the dupe? Why are we drawn to believe the man's story, and what does his final action reveal about the nature of men as societal beings? Is the ending a fault of the woman or of the man? If the woman is at fault, do women need to just be more careful in an overtly oppressive society? Or if the man is at fault, does he need to be more considerate of the extent to which his actions inflict damage upon society? The depiction is that both the woman and the man are at the extreme ends of their respective depths of capacity for emotional sentiment, and it is a very crude depiction that does little to progress away from the repression inherent to patriarchal societies. However, the responsibility to answer the questions posed by the film lies in the viewer, and as a result so too does the responsibility to make any changes in the real world away from what we see on screen.

I'll Wait for the Next One sets itself up as a cute little comedy skit, and it delivers on that premise but also surprises you with an incredibly moving finale. Four minute comedies are not supposed to be as moving as this film is, it's funny, charming, and heartbreaking all at the same time, showing you your emotions in a combination that they are not generally found. I can't recommend this movie enough. By the end of the diminutive film you feel like you have known the characters for years, especially the lead man and the woman looking for love, probably because they so perfectly represent.

The look on the man's face and the woman's face at the end of the film are brief moments of sheer performing brilliance rarely seen, especially in a short film, which itself is rarely seen. Seek this one out, you will laugh and you will cry, and most of all you will be moved.