L'HOMME DU TRAIN
MAN ON THE TRAIN |
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Director:
Patrice Leconte
Screenplay: Claude Klotz
Cast: Manesquier: Jean Rochefort
Milan: Johnny Hallyday
Luigi: Jean-François Stevenin
Max: Charlie Nelson
Sadko: Pascal Parmentier
Viviane: Isabelle Petit-Jacques
Manesquier’s sister: Édith Scob
Awards: Best Film, Best Actor (Rochefort), Audience Award, Venice
Film Festival (2002).
Running time: 90 minutes
Production: France/England/Germany, 2002
Rating: Not rated (violence, language)
Gauge: 35mm CinemaScope, DVD (color)
Language: French
Distributor: Swank Motion Pictures
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"[The
film] is a little gem: funny, literate, worldly and yet innocent all
at the same time. In an indefinable way, it is very French in the
sophistication that aerates its comic whimsy, like the bubbles in
champagne." Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian. |
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Late autumn
in a sleepy, provincial town. Milan, a taciturn tough-guy, arrives
with a mission: to rob a bank in three days’ time. Manesquier,
a retired schoolteacher and bachelor who has spent his life in the
comfort of the family villa, is due to undergo heart surgery on
the same day. The two strangers meet by chance in a pharmacy where
Milan is buying aspirin. On the street, the gunslinger discovers
he’s been given the soluble kind. Gentle, garrulous Manesquier
invites him home for a glass of water. So begins an unlikely friendship
between two opposites, each who sees in the other vestigial aspects
of himself. Milan envies the donnish man’s quiet, contemplative
life; Manesquier longs for the adventures of a lawless drifter.
Over the course of their few days together, the two men gradually
trade roles. Milan teaches Manesquier to shoot a pistol, while Manesquier
instructs the desperado on the finer points of wearing carpet slippers.
But before they can act on any incipient change of heart, their
respective appointments are upon them--Destiny, it seems, has dealt
them a hand they’re forced to play. A delicate chamber piece,
ripe with melancholy but seasoned with stylized language and humorous
exchanges, this is a fairy tale for the worldly-wise.
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| PHOTO Swank
Motion Pictures |
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