Educational Media Reviews Online

This playfully challenging and very entertaining contemporary French mystery-thriller centers on a triangle of two women and one man, each with unexplained or mysterious motives, both for us as viewers and for one or both of the other two characters. The film’s French title Roman de gare, (as opposed to Crossed Tracks, its alternative English title at film festivals), is quite appropriate, since it suggests the kind of plot we are about to see. This French phrase is also the name given to the yacht owned by Judith Ralitzer, the character at the center of the story (played effectively by Fanny Ardant), who is an extremely successful writer of the kind of popular mystery-thriller fiction novels (“romans”) one buys in a European train station (“gare”) to pass the time on a trip. The man in this triangle is first seen as an unnamed stranger (played well by Dominique Pinon, but many viewers may find his short stature and relatively advanced age to be out of sync with this romantic-and-potentially-dangerous “mysterious stranger” role) who is travelling cross-country by car and entertaining children with magic tricks at gas station stops, while broadcast TV news reports we see and hear in the background of these scenes suggest he could also possibly be a serial killer, just escaped from a high-security prison. Finally, the younger second woman in this triangle, named Huguette (played extremely well by Audrey Dana), is also travelling by car with her fiancée to visit with her sister’s family who live in relative poverty on a farm. As the interconnected stories of these three people get elaborated with many twists, turns, and flashbacks to earlier events, we are led to reconsider our initial impressions and to face new disturbing, and potentially dangerous, possibilities. The film ends with a series of appropriately dramatic and satisfying flourishes that reveal the actual identities and motives of all three characters.

Roman de gare is French director Claude Lelouch’s forty-fifth film project, for which he also wrote the original screenplay and worked as producer through his production company, Les Films 13, established in 1961. In addition to two Academy Awards (for A Man and a Woman, 1966) and one nomination (for Vivre pour Vivre, 1967), Lelouch’s early work was widely recognized at international film festivals (Cannes in 1966 and the Italian Academy of Cinema in 1971). He is still actively directing and producing successful, if not as widely recognized, new films and Roman de gare was nominated by the National Board of Review as the best foreign language film of 2008.

This is a very entertaining film for general audiences ranging from teenagers to adults, although its rapid pace, unfamiliar French cultural references and settings, as well the need to read subtitles may make it difficult for many English-speaking teenagers to follow. Viewed without subtitles, it could also be a very entertaining way for students of contemporary French language and culture to practice their listening and comprehension skills.