A martial drum beat, bagpipes, security lights in the blackness of a tunnel hurtle by like tracer bullets, then sunlight and blue sky. So opens The Girl on the Train and it’s hard to escape metaphorical preconceptions of life in/as motion when viewing this film. The best advice? If you want a metaphor to hang your hat on, think of gliding. Gliding implies that less energy is being used. But are you conserving said energy or just not making the effort? Then think of gliding as a powerful narrative force.

Jeanne (Émilie Dequenne) skates through Paris streets, talks of summer vacation and getting a job. Your impression of her is that she’s unfocused, but not overly so. The ease of being young without yet bearing the burden of a responsible life. Her mother Louise (Catherine Deneuve) provides childcare for other families in her own home. There’s a sunniness and honesty to Jeanne; she seems close to Louise but clouded aspects come to the fore as the film progresses. She glides, poorly, through a job interview then into a relationship with Franck (Nicolas Duvauchelle), an athlete who has a secret that flips the film’s direction halfway through. Jeanne’s actions are now spurred on by this secret and brings more completely into her life Samuel (Michel Blanc), the Jewish lawyer she’d interviewed with for a job and who cared for Louise years ago. His family figures mightily, but again with a gliding, storytelling ease, in this part of the film which is based on a 2004 anti-Semitic assault in France, later revealed as a hoax.

With flashback or montage, edits and cuts can drop like stones to stall a movie. Again the idea of gliding. The Girl on the Train glides with an economy of dialogue that communicates better than any weighty monologue of self analysis from a character. For a viewer wanting explanations handed to him or her on a silver platter this can be frustrating, but in real life pat answers to actions don’t always exist. The ease of this glide is what works for The Girl on the Train. It gets to the heart of much that matters to and what comes between the characters. It tricks you. Not so much into seeing Jeanne as something she’s not, but as a true reveal of her character.

The tired metaphor of life=motion-in/as-motion=life, is still vital and apt. The ease of The Girl on the Train allows you energy to appreciate connections made with a sentence or a shrug of the shoulder or a slow surfacing of dark intent born of confusion. The ponderous weight of spelling everything out in a film can mean there’s no movement at all, let alone the weightless, wonderful glide of this film. – [DVD]

Drama

Not Rated

DVD Release Date: 5/18/10

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