I wouldn’t have thought a movie with Juliette Binoche and Jean Reno could suck, but, well, I wouldn’t have thought that the American people would have come as close as they did to electing George W. Bush. So call me naïve. Because Jet Lag (Décalage horaire) sure does suck. You know, the French can make crappy movies all on their own, but that’s not good enough: now they want to make crappy movies à la Americaine. The Washington Post’s critic nattered on about how some Hollywood studio will probably remake Jet Lag as a lame romantic comedy with Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline, but you know what? It already is a lame romantic comedy, and if Meg Ryan is in it, at least I’d know to stay away.
The opening refers to American movies (Binoche’s Communist parents slapped her for going to see Roman Holiday because they thought it was decadent and unrealistic), and Binoche’s dopey beautician wants her life to be a movie -- she should have been more specific: a good movie or an interesting movie. Then again, maybe this trite, cutesy piffle is exactly the kind of movie her character would enjoy, because Jet Lag is far too much like an American movie. See, Binoche and Reno’s dour chef bump into each other at the airport when both their flights are delayed, and then over the course of the film, she breaks down his shell of cantankerousness and chemical dependence and he breaks down her shell of Max Factor (seriously: Tammy Faye Bakker would be like, “Honey, you might want to tone down the eyeliner”). And by the end, of course, these two wacky opposites who bickered most of the night find that they’ve fallen in love! No, really!
I am particularly hard on the movie for two reasons: first, its obnoxious ending (if they had stopped the film about 5 minutes earlier, I would have gone a little easier on it), and second, completely gratuitous use of Larry King. Honestly, isn’t it bad enough that he pops up in every other American movie? Do we have to endure him in foreign movies, now, too?
After that disappointment, I was a little nervous about sticking around to see The Man on the Train (L’homme du train). It, too, immediately recalled Hollywood: the opening is very John Ford/Sam Peckinpah, as a grizzled loner, half Charles Bronson, half Yoshiro Mifune, steps off a train into a deserted town as vaguely Sergio Leone-ish music plays. And it, too, involves opposites who attract: the man with no name, played by Johnny Hallyday, and a garrulous, widowed teacher, played by Jean Rochefort, who invites the stranger to stay at his house because the local hotel is closed.
But, fortunately, this film is another story. For starters, it’s directed by Patrice Leconte (Ridicule, The Girl on the Bridge), who has yet to disappoint me. Actually, he’s pleasantly astonished me so far. And the two main characters are delights, particularly the droll Rochefort (he dryly tells his visitor, as he expertly but joylessly plays the piano, “Apart from needlepoint, I have all the skills of a well-groomed, early 20th-century young girl”). With wry wit, Hallyday, cooling his heels before a robbery, and Rochefort, lonely and bored, admire and covet each other’s lives. The teacher gives the drifter his first-ever pair of slippers; the bandit teaches the meek widower how to shoot a gun.
Above all, though, where it differs most from Jet Lag
is
that it’s smart and unpredictable and leaves you to fill in some gaps.
I could add also that it’s witty, stylish without being showy, and gently
melancholy, but what I appreciated most was how it engaged my brain.
I forgot about most of Jet Lag within literally minutes of seeing
it, but The Man on the Train sticks with me.
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