Director and co-writer Téchiné based his film on a real 2004 event originally dramatized in Jean-Marie Besset's play, R.E.R. The root of the incident, which Téchiné uses here only late in the story, involved a girl who claimed she was attacked on a train because of anti-Semitism, a charge that later turned out to be false. It's an explosive kind of lie, the sort of thing that (particularly in a modern France which Téchiné shows as a place where anti-Semitism is on the rise) can turn into its own unique beast of a media circus. Téchiné is less interested in Jeanne's lie, or what the concurrent (and extremely underplayed) hype says about France or the nature of prejudice, then what it says about Jeanne, a cute and button-nosed, curly-haired blank of a thing.
The Girl on the Train is divided into two segments, one labeled 'Circumstances' and the other 'Consequences.' If Téchiné had envisioned this as more of a procedural piece, then it might have been the second part which was the most riveting, a Gallic Law & Order, perhaps. But because this is more of a character study of Jeanne, Téchiné exerts more of his energies in establishing her as an easily manipulated person who's close to an habitual liar. Practically stalked on the street by a pushy young wrestler named Franck (Nicolas Duvauchelle), Jeanne eventually moves in with him, not having the kind of personality which would allow her to keep saying No. This is after making some half-hearted attempts at finding a job, including interviewing at the office of star attorney Samuel Bleistein (Michel Blanc), an old flame of her mother's who she sees being interviewed about an anti-Semitic attack. It's only after Jeanne's relationship with Franck is traumatically ruptured that she decides to invent the attack on a train.
The relationship between Louise and Samuel that plays out once Jeanne has entangled herself in falsehoods, has an adult intensity to it, something that fails to materialize anywhere else in the film. Played by Catherine Deneuve with a level of common-sensical grace that's impressive even for the likes of her, Louise is skittish and hyper-sensitive as Jeanne is moribund, deflecting Samuel's wooing with the professional ease and bone-bred sadness of a widowed beauty.
Though Téchiné's desire to keep Jeanne as a cipher, and not to dredge up the reasons behind her monstrous lie, point toward a story with some universality and depth, the story that this film could have been fails ever to emerge. Téchiné clutters the Consequences section with only fragments of the real-world trauma around Jeanne's lie, cluttering his film with windy subplots (the on-again, off-again romance of Samuel's son and ex-wife being a particularly meaningless addition to the story). His Jeanne is an empty soul, grabbing out in a moment of desperation at an identity that will provide some direction in a wayward life, but instead only further clouds the issue. Téchiné's film has the same problem. Though told with verve and acted with diamond-like preciseness, it never plumbs the core of its story, and so risks being as serene and unreflective as Jeanne herself.
Aka Le fille du RER.
