Customer Reviews

Roman De Gare [DVD]

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What is this? A thriller? A murder mystery? A romance? A way to pass the next two hours or so? It's all of these, as the title tells us. Roman de Gare is also an intricate, fascinating and very amusing story with so many cleverly overlapping threads you'll need to pay attention.

There's Judith Ralitzer (Fanny Ardant) a best-selling author of popular novels. Wait...there's also her ghostwriter, Pierre Laclos (Dominique Pinon), who seems to have gone missing, perhaps permanently. There's Huguette (Audrey Dana), bruised around the edges and abandoned at a service station stop by her fiancée, who drives off with her car, her purse, her money and her identification. There's a schoolteacher who leaves his wife and kids. His wife turns out to be Pierre Laclos' sister. She finds solace by sharing Laclos' bed in his abandoned apartment below hers with the police officer that started out looking into her husband's disappearance and now is investigating the possible murder of Laclos by Judith Ralitzer. Got all that?

I almost forgot. There's also an escaped pedophile/rapist/murderer on the loose. We don't know what he looks like, but he loves to do the same kind of magic tricks for young girls that the man who may be Laclos likes to perform. When the possibly Laclos character meets Huguette, offers a ride and agrees to play her fiancé and meet Huguette's family, we're now in the kind of farm that makes Cold Comfort Farm look tidy. We listen to a jaunty, happy tune sung by, is it Laclos or not?, and Huguette as they go to fish for trout, while in the background we can hear the terrified squeals of a hog being butchered by her family.

Roman de Gare is a delight.

And all the while the man who may or not be Pierre Laclos is dictating notes in his pocket recorder. There's going to be a book in this somewhere. Will it be a new bestseller for Judith Ralitzer? Perhaps a book by a new author named Pierre Laclos. Might depend on who survives.

Fanny Ardant is intriguing, complex and has no trouble at all commanding the camera, but it is Dominique Pinon who carries us along. He's short, with a large head and squashed features. No one would call him handsome, much less a leading man, and yet that is what he turns out to be. One of his earliest movies was Diva in 1981. He had a supporting role as a short, ugly, vicious hood. His looks have mellowed a little at 52. His talent, however, has taken over. It's a pleasure to see how he takes this role and turns it into a whole catalogue of subtle emotions and possibilities. He keeps us thinking that his character could be a real problem, yet we wind up liking him the more we see him. He might even get the girl, but which one, and dead or alive? It's a wonderful performance.

Keep in mind what roman de gare means...the kind of trashy, glossy thriller we pick up at the airport to help pass the time. Director Claude Lelouch gives us a clever take on the form, with his tongue a bit in his cheek. It works superbly, in my view, most of the time. Roman de Gare is a great way to spend a couple of hours.

The great Claude Lelouch (A man and a woman)decided to gather with the great names of the Franch Cinema with this memorable film, that works out at several levels.

First at all it's a personal gaze to the Noir Film but retouched with the majestic elegance and joir de vivre so typical from the Fifties, in which the golden names of Jules Dassin (Rififi), Rene Clement (Purle noon), Claude Chabrol (This man must die) come to our mind. But, let's say it at once : it's a deserved homage in Hitchcok's memory.

On the other hand, the film is also a tribute to Dumas, Balzac, Roman Gary, Hemingway, Highsmith and the literature in its braod sense.

Lelouch did without of a great budget to build a solid script without special effects or inneccesary bloody scenes to create the atmosphere and the tension around a sinister lady who has known to cheat the entire world.

The true behind stages is a humble but clever journalist who is the real author of a group of widely knwon bestsellers. Since that non so ehtical perspective, the film begins to show the fame in many cases is not linked with the talent but with how to get "the coup de grace".

Since that perspective, the movie describes a full rounded circle in which the fate makes the justice and revenge, (two concepts that usually have nothing in common) may collide.

Don't miss this extraordinary movie. One of the top ten of 2007.

This movie is excellent. So very well produced and acted. It's what a mystery should be. Never a dull moment in this movie.

Excellent. Loved it! A true who-done-it! Think Usual Suspects, The Game, Spanish Prisoner. If you like mysteries and especially if you also like foreign films with subtitles you'll LOVE this movie.

This movie has a little bit of everything ... Trademark 'speeding auto' ... Beautiful countryside ...
Excellent cast!!!
Sub-titles? Yes. But you can read them!
I purchased two copies ... Used. Advertised as "acceptable"... In fact "Like New"!

I'd watch Dominique Pinon in just about anything. He's the unlikeliest of movie stars...poles apart from any perceived "ideal" of a leading man. Yet, he's unendingly watchable on screen.

That appeal is used to fine effect by director Claude Lelouch in 'Roman De Gare.' There's a moment where the movie could go one way or another. Pinon's character either is who he says he is...or he's someone else entirely. And that someone else would be a dangerous thing indeed for Audrey Dana's Huguette, who Pinon catches at her absolute nadir. It would be giving away the thrill of the movie to let you know how that encounter turns out, but Lelouch plays up that moment for all that it's worth. It's a brilliant piece of directing.

'Roman De Gare' means a trashy, airport novel, the type Judith Ralitzer (Fanny Ardant) writes. Or is Ralitzer who writes them at all? 'Roman De Gare' applies to the movie that Lelouch is making as well. So, expect some slightly incredulous twists and turns in the plot. It's all great fun.

Audrey Dana was the revelation here for me. At first I thought: nothing special. But her beauty is the type that creeps up on you, and her acting talent is undeniable. The scene where she chases away her soon-to-be-ex from the family farm is an instant classic. Hands down the best scene in this enjoyable film.

What is this? A thriller? A murder mystery? A romance? A way to pass the next two hours or so? It's all of these, as the title tells us. Roman de Gare is also an intricate, fascinating and very amusing story with so many cleverly overlapping threads you'll need to pay attention.

There's Judith Ralitzer (Fanny Ardant) a best-selling author of popular novels. Wait...there's also her ghostwriter, Pierre Laclos (Dominique Pinon), who seems to have gone missing, perhaps permanently. There's Huguette (Audrey Dana), bruised around the edges and abandoned at a service station stop by her fiancée, who drives off with her car, her purse, her money and her identification. There's a schoolteacher who leaves his wife and kids. His wife turns out to be Pierre Laclos' sister. She finds solace by sharing Laclos' bed in his abandoned apartment below hers with the police officer that started out looking into her husband's disappearance and now is investigating the possible murder of Laclos by Judith Ralitzer. Got all that?

I almost forgot. There's also an escaped pedophile/rapist/murderer on the loose. We don't know what he looks like, but he loves to do the same kind of magic tricks for young girls that the man who may be Laclos likes to perform. When the possibly Laclos character meets Huguette, offers a ride and agrees to play her fiancé and meet Huguette's family, we're now in the kind of farm that makes Cold Comfort Farm look tidy. We listen to a jaunty, happy tune sung by, is it Laclos or not?, and Huguette as they go to fish for trout, while in the background we can hear the terrified squeals of a hog being butchered by her family.

Roman de Gare is a delight.

And all the while the man who may or not be Pierre Laclos is dictating notes in his pocket recorder. There's going to be a book in this somewhere. Will it be a new bestseller for Judith Ralitzer? Perhaps a book by a new author named Pierre Laclos. Might depend on who survives.

Fanny Ardant is intriguing, complex and has no trouble at all commanding the camera, but it is Dominique Pinon who carries us along. He's short, with a large head and squashed features. No one would call him handsome, much less a leading man, and yet that is what he turns out to be. One of his earliest movies was Diva in 1981. He had a supporting role as a short, ugly, vicious hood. His looks have mellowed a little at 52. His talent, however, has taken over. It's a pleasure to see how he takes this role and turns it into a whole catalogue of subtle emotions and possibilities. He keeps us thinking that his character could be a real problem, yet we wind up liking him the more we see him. He might even get the girl, but which one, and dead or alive? It's a wonderful performance.

Keep in mind what roman de gare means...the kind of trashy, glossy thriller we pick up at the airport to help pass the time. Director Claude Lelouch gives us a clever take on the form, with his tongue a bit in his cheek. It works superbly, in my view, most of the time. Roman de Gare is a great way to spend a couple of hours.