Ehirerapp Waste of time

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

classicsoncall I watched this film in anticipation of what I thought might be a 2016 remake to be released in a few weeks as I write this. However the description of that film sounds like it will veer significantly from this one, with the trailers suggesting an element of mystery and possible horror.This movie just left me cold. It seemed a pointless exercise to run young Jeanne (Emilie Dequenne) through the gamut of experiences here only to have her try to deal with it all by making up a phony story about being attacked. It got to the point where I thought there was an element of mental illness involved with her self disfigurement and lying to authorities. She wasn't even very good about it as a thirteen year old boy saw right through it and asked her point blank - "Why do you tell lies?" Perhaps there was some profound element in the story line that this viewer missed, but this idea of a movie simply ending with no resolution is one I find to be terribly frustrating. Particularly when most of the performances were entirely credible and intriguing enough to suggest a worthwhile story, but in the end there was nothing to it.

gradyharp André Téchiné's 'The Girl on the Train' (La fille du RER) focuses on a naive girl Jeanne (Émilie Dequenne) who fabricates a story about being attacked on a suburban Paris train by black and Arab youths who supposedly mistook her for a Jew. The story is based on a real event that took place in France in 2004, adapted for the stage by Jean-Marie Besset as 'RER', and written for the screen by Besset, Odile Barski, and director Téchiné. Téchiné, stating that 'the story became the mirror of all French fears, a revelation of what we call the 'collective unconscious.' How an individual's lie is transformed into truth with respect to the community at large and its fears', 'The Girl on the Train' dissects the psychological circumstances and consequences surrounding a bold lie in a rich drama, concentrating on the permutations such an act has one all concerned. Jeanne lives with her single mother Louise (Catherine Deneuve) who manages the family finances as a childcare provider. Jeanne spends the greater part of her time roller skating and it is on one of her excursions that she meets the rather mysterious Franck (Nicolas Duvauchelle), a young wrestler who immediately attempts to win Jeanne's attention and affection despite Jeanne's insecurities. They eventually respond to the mutual chemistry and Franck searches for a way to help Jeanne out of financial difficulties: they become caretakers in a warehouse home, which is unbeknownst to Jeanne, a drug trafficking site. An incident occurs when a 'buyer' shows up and Franck is stabbed in defending his caretaker job and Jeanne's future. Jeanne is distraught but when she visits Franck in the hospital, Franck blames Jeanne for his bad luck and rebuffs her - he must now serve prison time for his involvement in the drug game. Now, torn between her loss of money, her new 'home', and the love of Franck, Jeanne plans a manner of striking back: she slices her skin, clips her hair, and paints swastikas on her abdomen and reports that she has been attacked by anti-Semites. Louise seeks the assistance of an old flame who is now the important Jewish lawyer Samuel Bleistein (Michel Blanc) - man with whom Jeanne had unsuccessfully interviewed for a job - and what Louise thought would be a protection for both Franck and Jeanne results in Jeanne's confession that she fabricated the entire incident, a factor that disrupts the lives of all those affected by the lie, especially the family of Bleistein already teetering on disintegration due to the rocky marriage of his son and daughter-in-law and the preparation for the grandson's contested Bar Mitzvah. Téchiné knows how to take seemingly ordinary people and circumstances and show the profound effect of evil wherever it raises its head. The film is enhanced by the verismo photography by Julien Hirsch and the apropos musical score by Philippe Sarde. While this film is not quite up to the standards of Téchiné's films such as 'Wild reeds', 'My Favorite Season', 'Changing Times' or 'Strayed', it still maintains that realistic surface beneath which lies the real grit of life. In French with English subtitles. Grady Harp

asc85 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.

nlmark I just watched this film in the cinema, and I got to say, at the end I was walking out of the cinema with a big smile on my face. Not because I had seen a very good movie, but rather because I found the sheer randomness of the narrative pretty funny.The movie tries to give a psychological motivation for the actions of its protagonist Jeanne, but what it actually accomplishes is very a fragmented sketch of Jeanne's life. There seems to be some causality in the narrative, but nowhere is there real motivation for the plot events. A lot of loose ends are left untied, and I kind of wondered why some things were even shown.The film style is sloppy and unimaginative. The director tries to establish a motif by repeatedly showing shots involving a metro, but the shots don't really fit well and its only purpose seems to be to remind us of what the movie is about (if you knew before going to see the movie). The editing is fragmentary and mediocre, the cinematography seems okay.I wouldn't really recommend seeing this film, though as I said before, I did enjoy myself, if not really for the reason I was supposed to.