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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 9, No. 32 |
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CLAUDE LELOUCH'S FANCIFUL MYSTERY MOVIE "ROMAN DE GARE"
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Meet the very mysterious
new 'Man and A Woman'
of TheColumnists.com
How delightful it is to discover that Claude Lelouch, at age 70, can still light up the screen with the most unorthodox of romantic pairings and still make us believe the most ridiculous poppycock as if it had just been handed down on stone tablets by Moses himself with a dramatic thunderclap or two.
I'll confess I sat through all of Lelouch's new film, "Roman de Gare," with a silly-ass grin on my face, knowing I was being flummoxed grandly and enjoying every minute of it. It took me back at least 40 years or so to the likes of "A Man and A Woman," "Live For Life" and so many other delightful Lelouch films of the past.
Consider the impossible duo he makes us go along with in this improbably silly romantic adventure/mystery movie: Pierre (Dominique Pinon) is middle-aged, has a receding hairline, looks like he lost his razor several weeks before we met him and has this gawdawful habit of puffing out his lips and chewing on what appears to be his cud.
"You chew like a cow," says Huguette (Audrey Dana), who sometimes looks at Pierre with the sort of astonishment one usually reserves for those moments when an especially ugly beetle crawls across your dinner plate.
There were moments when I even thought Pierre was in some way related to Pete the Tramp, a dissolute character I remember seeing in pornographic photos from the 1940s."This is our leading man?" I asked myself at first sight of him. "What could Lelouch have been thinking?"
In contrast, Audrey Dana is a splendid example of the saucy French movie star. Her Huegette is so gorgeous that you have to mop your lips with a hanky every time you see her for fear you might drool on the guy in the next row. What mad scientist of a movie director would ever ask us to imagine her in bed with a clunk like Pierre?
But then you need to know how Lelouch sets them up as a team: Huguette is engaged to a handsome physician named Paul (Cyrille Eldin) and is taking him to rural France to introduce him to her family. Unfortunately, he doesn't want to go, so they get into a horrible screaming match while stopped at a gas station and he gets back into the car, which is hers by the way, and drives off without her. Pierre, who's sitting in the adjacent cafe, sees and hears all this going down, so he timidly offers Huguette a ride when he finally realizes Paul isn't answering her calls to his cell phone and probably isn't coming back to pick her up.
At first, Huegette regards him with considerable caution. Could he possibly be "The Magician," the serial killer who recently escaped from prison and is now roaming the countryside? Or is he who he says he is: Pierre Luclos, the ghost writer for France's best-selling mystery novelist, Judith Ralitzer (Fanny Ardant)? Is he really just looking for plot ideas for Judith's next book? That appeals to Huegette, of course, since Judith is her absolutely favorite author.
But when Pierre admits he made the whole ghost writer thing up, Huegette is impressed with his ability to live out a fantasy. Inspired, she asks him if he'd be willing to come with her to her family's home and pass himself off as Paul, her husband-to-be. Which, of course, he agrees to do.
Lelouch is having one heck of a time jerking us around here. As goofy as it sounds, the imaginative weirdo Pierre is a perfect match for Huegette, who is pretty much living out a fantasy of her own as the hairdresser to the stars, claiming she did Lady Di's hair the morning she died.
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as the author who can't really write the best-sellers printed under her name. |
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If you think that's enough jerking for you, be advised that Lelouch has only just begun. When he gets through winding his storyline around our necks and leading us all over France by it, you realize you've been having a marvelous time and you've ended up where you never ever thought you could possibly be with these two bizarre people.
Pinon is an infectious actor who will win you over even as you wonder where they found this guy with the sort of pushed-in face and attrocious habits. Audrey Dana, as I've suggested, is pure confection. And Fanny Ardant, once the famous author Judith Ralitzer gets into the picture, is just marvelous.
I loved "Roman de Gare." The title, by the way, means something like "airport novel," meaning the sort of fast, enjoyable story you want when you're stuck at an airport and need quick relief from your boredom. That's the sort of book Judith Ralitzer writes and, in a sense, the sort of movies Claude Lelouch makes. I'm just so happy he's still making them and we're still getting a chance to see them over here.
©2008 by Ron Miller. This column first posted Aug. 25, 2008.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
You can comment on this column online. Please address your message to either "The Editors" or Ron Miller. To send an email, click here and don't forget to mention Ron's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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