Yet another underrated film by the almost brutally
undervalued Andre Techine, La fille du RER has been typically summed up in
sensationalistic terms: a young woman, Jeanne, falsely claims she was attacked on
a train by an anti-Semitic gang, causing a brief national sensation. The
opening titles with their marching-to-battle vibe seem to lay the groundwork
for something correspondingly confrontational, but from then on, Techine in
typical fashion confounds expectations, sowing much mystery as to the film’s
basic nature and purpose. Among other things, the incident in question doesn’t
even arise until the film’s second half, and hardly seems rooted in what came before
it; almost or literally no one who knows Jeanne believes her story and it
fairly rapidly falls apart; and Jeanne isn’t even Jewish. Her ex-boyfriend brands
her as a compulsive liar, but really only has one example to support that; he
blames her for his taking a shady job that lands him in jail, but the film
shows how he aggressively pursues her into being with him, her role in the
relationship a relatively passive one, almost a blank canvas on which men might
project their desires; at the end of the film she’s become a fantasy love
object for a much younger boy, a teenager. Despite the title, the defining recurring
image isn’t of Jeanne on the train but rather on roller blades, defined by pure
movement, shimmering with undefined possibility; it resonates against Techine’s
fascination with the mysteries of relationships, ranging here from unrealized
hints of a romance between Jeanne’s mother (Catherine Deneuve) and an old beau
who’s now a prominent lawyer, to the lawyer’s son and his estranged wife, veering
within seconds from hostility to passionate reconciliation. The film carries an
additional charge in the wake of the 2023 Hamas attacks and the subsequent spike
in protest and debate, particularly in its implied caution against under-analyzed
position-taking and tribalism.
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