Ceux qui m'aiment prendront le train (1998)
Directed by Patrice Chéreau

Film Review

Marriages are made in Heaven but families are forged in Hell, and director Patrice Chéreau leaves us in no doubt about the latter in Ceux qui m'aiment prendront le train, his daring follow-up to his internationally acclaimed La Reine Margot (1994).  Right from the start of the film, which shows the mutually antagonistic members of a wildly dysfunctional family piling onto a TGV so that they can attend a funeral in some remote backwater (Limoges, as it turns out), we can feel the impending storm.  Sure enough, the train has barely pulled out of the station before the hostilities begin and old enmities threaten to derail the family outing, more spectacularly than any fringe terrorist organisation could ever hope to derail the train itself.

Ceux qui m'aiment prendront le train is Chéreau's tour de force, a visually compelling drama that is absolutely drenched in cynicism and yet so deliciously true to life that it has more of a visceral than an emotional impact.  The camera barely seems to stop for a moment as it strays from one explosive confrontation to another, avoiding editing cuts and thereby locking the spectator into the seemingly endless cycle of heartbreak and rancour.   The impression is operatic (perhaps not surprisingly, as Chéreau was also an experienced director of staged operas), the emotions distorted and amplified as much by the heavily laid on soundtrack as by the virtuoso camerawork, but this does not distract from the intimacy that is at the core of the drama, the brutal intimacy that leads the characters into conflict with one another and brings further disfigurement to their already shattered lives.

The finely chiselled screenplay (written by Chéreau in collaboration with old hand Danièle Thompson) is admirably well-served by a cast of mind-blowing proportions.  There is certainly no shortage of talent in the dizzying ensemble that Chéreau has thrown into his bubbling cauldron of hate and recrimination.  At the heart of the drama are tensions over inheritance (the usual point of conflict at any funeral), but this is pretty incidental to the peripheral crises that flare up around it - failing relationships, sibling rivalry and a case of botched paternity.  In this frenetic patchwork psychodrama, there is not one actor who fails to give his or her best, imbuing the characters' slices of life with shards of truth that are as poignant as they are cruel.
 
Dominique Blanc may have won a César for her contribution but hers is just one of an astonishing array of perfectly judged performances, with some equally impressive turns from Pascal Greggory, Bruno Todeschini and Charles Berling.  Vincent Perez virtually steals the film in its viciously intense second half, harrowingly convincing as a transsexual burdened with crippling insecurities, although Jean-Louis Trintignant gives him a good run for his money as the film's most fully developed and intriguing character, the solitary outsider who has most to lose from the death of his brother (who, incidentally, he also plays in a series of flashbacks).

La Reine Margot was a hard act to follow but Patrice Chéreau rose to the challenge and delivered a film that is every bit as imaginative and adventurous (although not all the critics were convinced of its merits at the time).  Ceux qui m'aiment prendront le train is a superb example of a kind of film that has become increasingly popular in French cinema over the past two decades, the so-called 'choral drama' in which multiple stories involving many characters are interwoven, but rarely with the delicacy and sophistication that Chéreau achieves in his film.  Nominated for eleven Césars in 1999 (in categories that included Best Film and Best Actor), the film won three awards, for its cinematography, direction and supporting actress (Dominique Blanc).  One of the highlights of Chéreau's modest but impactful career as a film director, it brought something fresh and invigorating to French cinema in the late 1990s and remains one of the decade's most inspired films.

Film Synopsis

Before his death, a world-famous painter, Jean-Baptiste, requests that he be buried in the cemetery at Limoges, a town that is reputed for accommodating more dead people than living.  He insists that his relatives, whom he mostly despises, must take the train to attend his funeral.  Once he has shuffled off his mortal coil, Jean-Baptiste's huge family pour onto a high speed train bound for the remote French town.  Relatives who have not met for ages, and have never got on well in the past, are forced into close proximity, and it is not long before petty disputes and mutual loathing threaten to ruin the occasion....