moviereview - Roman de Gare

ROMAN DE GARE

	A murder mystery, a suspense thriller, a story of truth, impression and reality wrapped around a large yacht and a celebrity writer.	score 4	moviereview rates films from 1 (unwatchable) to 5 (unmissable)
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Cast
Dominique Pinon, Fanny Ardant, Audrey Dana, Zinedine Soualem, Michele Bernier

Director
Claude Lelouche

Screenwriter
Claude Lelouche

Country
France (subtitles)

Rating / Running Time
M / 100 minutes

Australian Release
November 2008

Official Site

If you think they don’t make cracking good thrillers like they used to, think again. Roman de Gare is one from the old school steeped in the best of the new; it’s nerve-jangling edge-of-the-seat stuff that will keep you hooked until the very last scene. Honestly, for Lelouche has invested enough energy, suspense and plot twists for two features yet never looses track of his ideas, or his audience.

The film opens in a grimy Parisian police station where acclaimed writer Judith Ralitzer (Fanny Ardant) is being questioned. Elsewhere a serial paedophile has broken out of prison – magic tricks his speciality. A bickering couple break up where a man waits in a service station, with a deck of cards. Lelouch introduces these characters whose connection, if there is one, remains ambiguous. There are white lies and black lies, murder and intrigue, and one hell of a McGuffin on which the entire first half is hung.

Flashback (or is it forward?) where Ralitzer is being harangued by a TV interviewer. The stranded woman convinces the waiting man, who may or may not be Ralitzer’s ghost-writer, to stand in as her fiancé. A policeman comforts a woman whose brother has gone missing. Lelouche makes splendid use of the Hitchcock Handbook as his yarn rattles toward a thrilling conclusion which is not to say this is in any way derivative – it’s not. Lelouch is too savvy a filmmaker for that, but he does pay respect to the film’s origins.

He also makes splendid use of a cast who return mesmerising performances, none more so than an extraordinary Pinon (the irregular looking, camera savvy star of Amelie) who commands the film. Foremost Roman de Gare is a cinematic onion, a brilliantly constructed film whose enigmatic layers hide and reveal the spice and tears of its unpredictable characters. It’s one from the old school, and the new. A film whose striking originality is well worth making an effort to see.

// COLIN FRASER