The Girl on the Train

The Girl on the Train is a film by André Téchiné, an esteemed French writer/director whose career goes back into the early 70's. Here, he makes a film without any urgency, without any tension. It follows the girl on the train: Jeanne (Émilie Dequenne), who lives her life without any urgency or thought. She's looking for a job, but she doesn't really know anything or have any worthwhile skills. She looks to her mother, Louise (Catherine Deneuve) for help, and Louise sends her to a prolific lawyer who she was close to years ago. The lawyer, Bleistein, is quite successful, jewish, and doesn't see much in Jeanne. Jeanne ends up with a professional wrestler and they house sit for an electronics dealer. It turns out that the guy was into drugs and her boyfriend is stabbed. In anger and confusion, Jeanne fakes a hate crime against herself, and claims that North Africans attacked her for being jewish (although she isn't). This becomes big news and suddenly Jeanne is a little more interesting to everyone (including the jewish lawyer, her mother, and even the French President). So many big things happen here: a stabbing, a lie, idiocy, and yet it is all handled without much life. Like it's main character, the film is in a daze and never really tells us why it's important. Jeanne is just a fuck-up, so why would the film want to parallel to that level of idiocy? Perhaps it makes it authentic, and it allows for questions to well up rather than be posed. This is an interesting and well-acted film, but I fear it was not handled well enough to deserve much praise. I don't regret seeing it and there's a lot to admire in The Girl on the Train, but it needed some urgency, or a driving force throughout.
The Girl on the Train: ★★★1/2