| THOSE WHO LOVE ME CAN TAKE THE TRAIN Director: Patrice Chéreau "Films that take place on trains are always very dynamic, even when they are shot on a studio.There's always tremendous élan: you move toward problems, or toward solutions. It is the perfect motor to accelerate a story. It travels at the speed of thought." Patrice Chéreau There is a current trend in films these days using a hand- held camera to show a particular character's unstable mental state. From Breaking The Waves in 1996 to Celebration in 1998 and The Blair Witch Project in 1999, the camera bobs, weaves and whirls around the characters giving audiences the jitters or the heaves. And now it has caught on to where it's used if anyone in the movie is unstable or agitated--which if you think about it describes most characters in movies. The technique is hardly new but one that lends itself well to the cinematic vision as much as editing does. Particularly because the hand-held camera has the advantage of giving the actors freedom to move around while at the same time intruding into and retreating from an actor's space in a single take. This technique is well suited to directors such as the director of Those Who Love Me Can Take The Train Patrice Chéreau who is a famous theatre and opera director and who likes the improvisational look and feel that hand-held shots can add to the look of a film and for what it can add to the performances. This film -- shot in cinemascope -- by Eric Gauthier is almost all hand held and it suits the material well since each of characters is close to insane anyway. The basic premise of the film is that a famous painter (Jean-Louis Trintignant) dies and as a last wish he asks to be buried in a distant graveyard in Limoges (the largest cemetery in Europe) declaring that "those who loved me will take the train." It's a deliberate last trick by the old man because what he does is kick-start old family hostilities and new bitter rivalries among the travelers acquainted with him - the screenwriter Pierre Trividic refers to it as a King Lear-like premise where you make people compete for their love. Similar to a R. W. Fassbinder film there are no heroes or villains in this film just a bunch of lovers and ex-lovers with a lot of emotional baggage. The characters -- on train from Paris -- are all neurotic and distressed which makes their relations with one another that much more problematic. The film has a soap opera element with each of the characters -- most of whom are gay -- stressed out dealing not only with the death of this man who was a father figure to them but also with one another over sexual situations and the usual vicissitudes of familial strife. The acting is great if only because each of the characters really gets to bitch and carry on at some point and Chéreau -- showing his theater roots -- gives the actors meaty, talky roles while pushing the camera close so we can see the actors sweat while performing. One of the better roles is played by Vincent Perez who -- with a rather striking feminine pose and attitude -- gets to play a docile transsexual. In one scene (almost worth the price of admission) we get a view of him in the nude with prosthetic breasts while crying and carrying on in the shower. Clearly a role he must relish after The Crow: City of Angels. The most annoying aspect of the film, believe it or not, isn't the whiny characters but the selection of music which although normally fine on the radio or at home really feels out of place in this film. It's as if Chéreau selected his own personal favorites to add a little flavor and then forced them into the narrative whenever he felt he wanted a scene to be ambiguous. Some critics have touted the film as worth seeing two or three times to get the convoluted plot and the personal relationships worked out. True, there are enough plot twists to throw the average TV viewer into confusion but what's unmistakable is the mood of the film, which is unpleasant enough that most viewers wouldn't want to take the journey a second time. - Matt Langdon |