La Fille du RER
(The Girl on the Train)

Thursday, April 7, 2010, 7 p.m.
All showings are in the Mother Theresa Hackelmeier Memorial Library Auditorium

La Fille du RER (The Girl on the Train)

André Téchiné’s provocative 18th feature is inspired by true events: the RER D (a Paris commuter line) affair of July 2004, in which a non-Jewish young woman falsely claimed to be the victim of an anti-Semitic attack by six men, whom she identified as Arabs and blacks. Téchiné skillfully observes contemporary French society and politics without ever lecturing. The girl of the title, the unemployed, twenty-ish Jeanne, is constantly in motion: if not on the RER train that goes right by the house in the Paris suburbs that she shares with her widowed mother, Louise, then on rollerblades. Gliding through a park, Jeanne meets thuggish wrestler Franck, who becomes her boyfriend and sets up house with her, in a warehouse of stolen merchandise and drugs. Louise urges Jeanne to apply for a secretarial position with Samuel Bleistein, a lawyer and Jewish activist, once in love with Louise. Jeanne’s motives for her unconscionable act deliberately remain unknowable; Téchiné’s film, shot by cinematographer Julien Hirsch with exceptional immediacy and fluidity, isn’t interested in easy answers. Instead, The Girl on the Train provides a prism through which we may begin to understand anti-Semitism, racism, and what it means to declare yourself a victim.

Director and Writer: André Téchiné
Running time: 105 minutes
Production: France, 2008
Language: French with English subtitles
Rating: Not rated