L’Homme du train (2002) - film review

One evening, a stranger, Milan, arrives in a small French town and enters a pharmacy to buy some aspirin.   There, he meets Manesquier, a retired teacher who lives alone in a huge house.  Realising he has bought soluble aspirin by mistake, Milan accepts Manesquier’s invitation to his house.  Despite their differences, the two men are drawn together by a mutual respect.   Milan, a world-weary gangster, would willingly swap his life for Manesquier’s calm retirement.   In his turn, Manesquier fancies himself in Milan’s shoes, living a life of danger and adventure.  Three days from now both men have to confront death – Manesquier in a heart operation, Milan in a bank raid.  Realising how little time is left to them, the two men reflect on the other life they could have had...

L’Homme du train, Patrice Leconte’s darkest and most mysterious film to date, sees the improbable pairing of ageing French rock star Johnny Halliday and veteran popular actor Jean Rochefort.   With its mix of black comedy, bleak existentialism and surrealist touches, the film belongs to the darker part of Leconte’s oeuvre, which includes Monsieur Hire (1989) and Le Mari de la coiffeuse (1990).

Compelling performances from the film’s two stars make this a haunting and memorable piece of cinema.  Rochefort, one of France’s finest character actors, now in his seventies, shows no sign of losing his ability to captivate his audience.  The film, his seventh collaboration with Patrice Leconte, allows him to give one of his best screen performances.  Johnny Halliday, not so well known as an actor, offers a perfect contrast to Rochefort’s likeable ex-teacher, although he relies more on his "hard" image as a singer than his talent as an actor.

With its appropriately sombre cinematography, the film draws us into the minds of its two principal characters, Manesquier and Milan, allowing the audience to sympathise with their sense of regret at what they perceive as wasted lives.   The style of the film is very much that of a doom-laden western, portraying its two heroes as solitary outsiders and culminating in the latter-day equivalent of a gunfight at the last chance saloon.

The film’s unusual, surreal ending has proved to be a source of controversy, with Rochefort himself stating that it was probably a mistake.  However, it allows Leconte to pull off the seemingly impossible feat of giving his tragic film something that may pass for a happy ending – although what exactly he meant to say is anyone’s guess.

© James Travers 2002

Write a review for this film...

What do you think of this film?