. "Circumstances and consequences? have had to spend three years since the great Witnesses so we can see a new film by André Téchiné .
This time the French filmmaker shot his own script. Write a script based on the play RER of Jean-Marie Besset which, in turn, is based on a real event that shook French society in 2004.
The event is none other than the complaint, by a young man of 23 years, a false anti-Semitic attack perpetrated by a group of Africans on a commuter train. A complaint that both media and political class, were quick to believe and magnify, which mobilized the entire French police and questioned the French model of multicultural society.
Techiné organizes his film as a diptych, dividing it into two chapters to it, nothing subtle, entitled respectively Circumstances and Consequences. There is, therefore surprises regarding what we see in the content thereof.
The intention of the filmmaker to write and shoot it the twenty-first film is not as showing both titles, the young judge but rather to show the circumstances that lead to lies and the consequences of the lie.
Thus the French filmmaker take our hand and joining it to the young protagonist, will allow us to accompany her on her long walks on skates and in his constant comings and goings on board the commuter train in search of a job.
In this scenario, accompanied by a soundtrack that alternates between the protagonist listens to music through your headphones with the incessant noise that cause trains pass at full speed (image used by the director as a metaphor for the dizzying speed with which time passes), we will see life of the young. We will know his relationship with his mother, a cold and contained Catherine Deneuve, with whom he shares a house and attend their progressive crush of a strange young elite athlete a minority sport and amateur, as she , to skate.
The film is well shot, with subtlety and craft, but there are also the subtlety becomes its greatest flaw. I speak, in this case, the subtlety in the treatment of the characters.
Techiné so much to put in not judging, displays so much energy into avoiding direct our view of its protagonist, not just understanding pushing reason to lie in the way it does. I, for one, have not been able to.
Speaking of subtlety is required also speak of another aspect of the film is relegated to mere notes: Criticism about media, hungry headlines, show great willingness to believe, to echo and enhance the possible a flimsy story, a lie so obvious that even a child was able to swallow, and the serious consequences of a lie and on public confidence in the stability of a multicultural society. These aspects that are relegated to brief comments in talks held at the home of the Jewish lawyer.
Girl Train , André latest film Techiné to date (currently is immersed in the post-production Impardonnables , your next job) is, therefore, an interesting approach to formal level while impaired by a weak script that an ineffective treatment of characters and a virtually non-existent development of the subplots do we stay with the feeling that what might have been more interesting than what we just saw.
To view the trailer, click here
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Pablo Cuevas 
