The Girl on the Train
by Cine Noir
Remember the story of the boy who cried wolf. He cried wolf one too many times and paid with his life. THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN could reductively be described as a modern rendition of this timely fable, except this story is true. In 2004 Marie-Léonie Leblanc claimed she was the victim of an anti-Semitic attack by men of African/Arab origin, only to later admit to lying. The ‘assault’ and subsequent lie made international news, with condemnation from then French president, Jacques Chirac, and Ariel Sharon. However, director André Téchiné’s film isn’t a retelling of these events, but an examination of intimacy and alienation in modern France, based on these events.
Émile Dequenne plays Jeanne, anatomically attached to her rollerblades, is an idealistic, directionless twenty-something Parisian, who lives with her mother Louise (Catherine Deneuve) in the quiet suburbs of Paris. Jeanne’s half-hearted search for a job, and Louise’s continuous pestering, leads her to the legal firm of Samuel Bleistein (Michel Blanc), a prominent, politically-engaged, community-focused Jewish lawyer and – excuse the cynicism – the unrequited love of Jeanne’s mother. While Louise is undecided about reigniting a relationship with Bleistein, Jeanne falls in love with Franck (Nicolas Duvauchelle), a wrestler with a hardened stare that threatens to unhinge at any moment. This relationship is the beginning of an unraveled thread that leads Jeanne to telling a lie that doesn’t just grip France and the western world but turns her private suburban domesticity upside down.
The narrative is split between two distinct acts: ‘Circumstance’, which explains the events that lead up to Jeanne’s baseless story, and the thereafter in ‘Consequences’. These acts become a character study of Jeanne’s predicament to her mother’s dismay and the full integration of the Bleisteins into the main narrative. However, with the ‘Consequence’ act the film never fully explores the reverberating effect of Jeanne’s story on French-Jews and Afro/Arab French communities; a strange directorial choice considering the international effect of the real story. But don’t let this personal preference overshadow what is possibly the purpose of Techiné’s work: this film is about dichotomies; the dichotomy between the public and private, the city and the suburbs, the (ethnic) minorities and the (French) majorities; intimacy and alienation. Techiné explores the tensions between these dichotomies with the characters of Jeanne and Louise, as the private effects of Jeanne’s stupid lie on her mother’s private life and, maybe, this where Bleistein’s pragmatism plays a crucial balance to the unwarranted chaos caused by Jeanne and the press, but there is more to it.
Jeanne’s existence is seemingly flawless and somewhat ethereal; this safe Parisian suburban living is a world away from the ethnically mixed ‘ghettos’ and tense streamlined homes of affluent Jews. However, this doesn’t excuse, but explains Jeanne’s unconsciousness to racism. Her sunny carefree lifestyle is representative of France’s liberty, however, the zealous hunger of the press to ‘protect’ this beautiful French female ‘victim’ from this monstrous African/Arab origin, demonstrates how the remaining French ideologies of fraternity and (racial) equality are not applicable to all. Téchiné subtly comments on the visibility of Afro-Arab immigrants in France as being of relevance when they are seen to be committing such abhorrent acts, even acts never committed.
The Girl on the Train doesn’t become burdened or define itself by the events that occurred in 2004, but it still disappoints because it never pushes itself, and very much like the immigrant tensions in France, it tiptoes around the central issue.
