Movie Summary of The Girl on The Train by Michael The Moviegoer.
THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN = **1/2
“On The Wrong Track”
Andre Techine’s new film “The Girl On The Train” is inspired by true events. The description of these events sounds sensationalistic enough for the evening news. But as portrayed in this film, it makes us wonder if it was a slow news day in Paris that day.
Emilie Dequenne plays Jeanne, a young 20-something French girl who lies about being the victim of a vicious anti-Semitic attack while on a train in the suburbs of Paris. But, with only a few minor scratches on her face and some Swastikas drawn on her stomach in black marker, nobody seems to believe her.
For us as an audience there is no mystery since we already know she did this to herself because we see it. We just don’t understand why. What might have been a decent psychological character study is derailed by too many additional characters and sub-plots. The main event doesn’t even happen until the film’s second half.
The film is actually divided into two halves. The first is called ‘Circumstances’ and the second is ‘Consequences’. But neither section offers any possible motives or answers. And the sub-plot involving a re-kindled love interest for her mom, played by Catherine Deneuve, with a famous Jewish lawyer, doesn’t really lead anywhere.
Perhaps Techine offers no easy explanations because there never were any. Maybe this girl just did what she did out of boredom. But who wants to see a movie about that?
DVD Double Feature: On the subject of strange hoaxes, in 2007 Richard Gere starred in “The Hoax”. It was the true story about Clifford Irving, a failed novelist who decided to write and publish a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes.
Michael The Moviegoer
