Les Passagers (1999)
Directed by Jean-Claude Guiguet

Film Review

Les Passagers is a thought-provoking and hugely original film d'auteur from director and former film critic Jean-Claude Guiguet.  Through a series of inter-locking vignettes involving vulnerable men and women looking for love in an increasingly loveless world, the film makes some appropriate comments on the nature of our society.  Whilst not all of the observations are original, the poetic way in which Guiget makes his thesis certainly is.  Les Passagers is an odd but appealing mix of the overtly political and the intensely humanist - rather like a curious marriage of Godard and Truffaut.  (The connection with the latter is emphasised by Véronique Silver's pesence as the film's narrator, a role she had in Truffaut's last but one film, La Femme d'à côté).

Among the diverse themes the film addresses are the random behaviour of the AIDS virus (which, unlike human beings, is totally non-discriminatory) and the destruction wrought by industries which are driven solely by the need to increase profits, not for the betterment of humanity.  A beautifully composed work, this is a film which accurately reflects a modern western society in which communities are fragmented, life is increasingly uncertain and people find it harder and harder to communicate with one another.

Film Synopsis

Men and women, like lost souls, drift across Paris, their journeys made easier and emptier by the new tramway system that carries them along with their solemn thoughts and sad remembrances.  It seems the world is more crowded than ever, but in the midst of these milling crowds people no longer have the desire to communicate.  These passengers on life's trickle of despair scarcely notice any of the unfamiliar faces around them and remain sealed in their own little bubble, nurturing wounds that can never heal and dreams that can never be.  One young man is on his way to the grave of his former lover, who recently died from AIDS.  He thinks only of their last few days together.  Memories that sting more than they console.

Another man has chosen to marry the ugliest of woman because she has what he most desires - a pair of perfect feet.  A hospital worker coping with depression does her best to cheer up a young colleague of hers who has become disillusioned with life, while her daughter struggles to keep her head above water as things become increasingly difficult for her.  All around these sad souls in transit there is little to encourage them.  Society is falling apart, people find it harder to connect and the AIDS epidemic has become a mocking metaphor for a world that is locked in a spiral of ever-worsening decline.  As the canker spreads, so the sense of futility grows.  Hope is all that remains, but that also seems to be fading, like a dying sun...