The Girl on the Train / La Fille du RER Series: Rendez-Vous with French Cinema [2009] Director: André Téchiné, Country: France, Release: 2009, Runtime: 110
A young woman, Jeanne (Émilie Dequenne), reports that skinheads attacked her, seemingly for being a Jew. The incident becomes a media sensation, and attorney Samuel Bleistein (Michel Blanc), an old friend of Jeanne’s mother Louise (Catherine Deneuve), takes the case. The incident and its aftermath, drawn from real events, formed the core of Jean-Marie Besset’s play on which the film is based, but as always in the work of André Téchiné, dramatic entanglements provide him with an opportunity to explore the complex family and social relationships that surround and define his characters. Notions of class, ethnicity, and who’s in and who’s out in contemporary France course through the film, offering a provocative reflection on the creation of identity at a time of ever-increasing social tension.
