Crossed Tracks (2007)

Absolutely Fantastic

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

It's always a pleasure to see someone who has gone through a bad patch return to form so I'm glad to be able to salute this new - albeit now two years old - entry from Claude Lelouch. There are elements of both David Mamet and Harlan Coben in the labyrinthine plotting that's hard to second guess - indeed Lelouch seems to be playfully teasing the viewer by deliberately offering instant solutions that are clearly red herrings. A newsflash recounts the escape from prison of a paedophile/murderer who charms his victims via magic tricks and minutes later Dominic Pinon accosts a child and her parents, 'produces' a bunch of flowers from nowhere and bestows them upon the child encouraging the viewer to make four from a two and two that in truth total seventeen. Meanwhile Audrey Dana, en route to her parents' remote and primitive farm, is driving her boyfriend to distraction so much so that he dumps her in the gas station where Pinon is hanging around for no discernible reason and soon performs a card trick for her. But this is only the beginning, hardly has the viewer decided that Laclos (Pinon) IS the magician/killer than a husband reports her teacher husband missing and Pinon, who has mentioned to Dana that he was once a teacher, is being tapped for a new role; when Dana tells him she is both a hairdresser/manicurist and fan of novelist Fanny Ardant, whose nails she recently buffed, Pinon claims to be Ardant's ghost-writer. And so it goes, layer upon layer so much so that Lelouch might as well have written it on onionskin parchment. What it is is not a thriller, not a romance, not a suspense, not a drama but a Total Delight. See it.

What is this? A thriller? A murder mystery? A romance? A way to pass the next two hours or so? It's all of these, as the title tells us. Roman de Gare is also an intricate, fascinating and very amusing story with so many cleverly overlapping threads you'll need to pay attention. There's Judith Ralitzer (Fanny Ardant) a best-selling author of popular novels. Wait...there's also her ghostwriter, Pierre Laclos (Dominique Pinon), who seems to have gone missing, perhaps permanently. There's Huguette (Audrey Dana), bruised around the edges and abandoned at a service station stop by her fiancée, who drives off with her car, her purse, her money and her identification. There's a schoolteacher who leaves his wife and kids. His wife turns out to be Pierre Laclos' sister. She finds solace by sharing Laclos' bed in his abandoned apartment below hers with the police officer that started out looking into her husband's disappearance and now is investigating the possible murder of Laclos by Judith Ralitzer. Got all that? I almost forgot. There's also an escaped pedophile/rapist/murderer on the loose. We don't know what he looks like, but he loves to do the same kind of magic tricks for young girls that the man who may be Laclos likes to perform. When the possibly Laclos character meets Huguette, offers a ride and agrees to play her fiancé and meet Huguette's family, we're now in the kind of farm that makes Cold Comfort Farm look tidy. We listen to a jaunty, happy tune sung by, is it Laclos or not?, and Huguette as they go to fish for trout, while in the background we can hear the terrified squeals of a hog being butchered by her family. Roman de Gare is a delight. And all the while the man who may or not be Pierre Laclos is dictating notes in his pocket recorder. There's going to be a book in this somewhere. Will it be a new bestseller for Judith Ralitzer? Perhaps a book by a new author named Pierre Laclos. Might depend on who survives. Fanny Ardant is intriguing, complex and has no trouble at all commanding the camera, but it is Dominique Pinon who carries us along. He's short, with a large head and squashed features. No one would call him handsome, much less a leading man, and yet that is what he turns out to be. One of his earliest movies was Diva in 1981. He had a supporting role as a short, ugly, vicious hood. His looks have mellowed a little at 52. His talent, however, has taken over. It's a pleasure to see how he takes this role and turns it into a whole catalogue of subtle emotions and possibilities. He keeps us thinking that his character could be a real problem, yet we wind up liking him the more we see him. He might even get the girl, but which one, and dead or alive? It's a wonderful performance. Keep in mind what roman de gare means...the kind of trashy, glossy thriller we pick up at the airport to help pass the time. Director Claude Lelouch gives us a clever take on the form, with his tongue a bit in his cheek. It works superbly, in my view, most of the time. Roman de Gare is a great way to spend a couple of hours.

Love mysteries with loads of plot twists? Here is the film for you. Claude Lelouch (A Man & A Woman)has crafted a finely honed thriller, with a top notch cast that takes us in the mind of a writer,who may or may not have some dubious means of collecting ideas for her novels. There are loads of other characters tossed in to make this a film to keep you both thinking,as well as on the edge of your seat. Fanny Ardant (always welcome in any French film) plays the writer to perfection. Dominique Pinot plays a pivotal figure who may (or may not) be a serial rapist. The rest of the cast also turns in some finer than fine performances. Dammit, let's face it...there is a pathetic lack of films like this produced in Hollywood (or as I sometimes prefer to refer it to Hollywierd). I guess as long as there is quality films being produced in Europe (or Asia,Africa,or where ever),there is no lack of films to be enjoyed,out there.

After the unfair successive failure of the aborted trilogy of "La Comédie Humaine", we thought that Claude Lelouch was broke for a long time whereas Roman de Gare is released less than 2 years after "le courage d'aimer", the second and final opus of the forecast trilogy. Shot in secret with a nom de plume, Roman de Gare recalls a little of the freshness of the Lelouch of the 60's, but also lacks of the grandeur we were used to: the image quality is pretty poor, the cast is not all stars, though Fanny Ardant, Truffaud's egerie is superb as usual, we feel Lelouch had really little money to shoot; not a great music as usual(late Gilbert Becaud was a respected French singer, but the choice of the songs does not highlight the scenes to my feelings), the story is centered on a murder story, but is actually a pretext to demonstrate once more the human and love relations that the director is famous to be a passionate of. Not the greatest Lelouch, but not boring either due mainly to an unusual funny script and a pretty good acting.