Leconte has always been a chameleon. The Frenchman started as a frothy comedy director and came into his own as an international filmmaker with his 10th feature, the dark, hypnotic Simenon drama “Monsieur Hire” in 1988. From film to film–“The Hairdresser’s Husband,” “Ridicule,” “The Girl on the Bridge,” “The Widow of St. Pierre,” and now the wonderfully intimate “Man on the Train”–he never does the same thing twice. Like an old Hollywood pro, he changes styles to fit his subjects. Unlike an old Hollywood pro, he has the freedom to make what he wants, often working on the scripts himself. He’s an anti-auteurist auteurist.
With Loach, certain things can always be expected, and in that sense he’s the more traditional auteur. No director is more committed to depicting working class life. His politics are unabashedly left, sometimes overtly, sometimes covertly. He never strays from the realist mode, often using unknown or unprofessional actors whose thick dialects–in movies such as “Riff Raff,” “My Name is Joe” and his current, Scottish-set “Sweet Sixteen”–require subtitles for an American ear. Loach did some of his best work in the ’60s, at the start of his career (“Kes”) and he’s come back strong in the ’90s with the Spanish Civil War epic “Land and Freedom” (an unusual leap into the past), “Raining Stones” and “Ladybird, Ladybird.” The unremitting bleakness of many of his earlier films is muted by a newfound humor and tenderness.
Some of this can be attributed to his partnership with screenwriter Paul Laverty, who wrote “My Name is Joe,” “Bread and Roses” and “Sweet Sixteen,” films that are brisker, and more intricately plotted than much of he earlier work. Indeed, the twists and turns of “Sweet Sixteen,” in someone else’s hands, would be flat-out melodrama, as it charts the rise and fall of a Scottish teenager sucked into the criminal underworld. But Loach’s observational style, his dedication to verisimilitude and his humanism take “Sweet Sixteen” in another direction. Without any didacticism or lecturing, he shows us the effects of poverty on his young hero Liam (the remarkable Martin Compston), the son of a junkie mother who’s locked up in jail. Liam adores his mother (as much as he hates her current boyfriend and his nasty grandfather), and has a heartbreaking belief in her redemption. She’s due to be released on his 16th birthday, and he fixates on the idea of buying her a home where their future together will be safe from poverty, addiction and bad men. Smart, fearless and a born salesman, he rips off the hated boyfriend’s heroin stash and discovers how much money there is to be made selling it. He’s so good at it (never indulging in the drugs himself) that his talents draw the attention of the local crime lord, who wants Liam working for him, not against him. This is a man who can give the boy all the material rewards he’s ever dreamed of. It may sound like an oft-told tale, but it doesn’t play like one, because Loach isn’t interested in melodrama for itself. There’s a core of innocence in the deluded boy–everything he does is for his “mum”–that remains even when he shows himself capable of murder, and it makes the inevitable destruction of his illusions that much more wrenching. Loach is too clear-eyed to sentimentalize Liam’s tragedy. He knows a story this harrowing doesn’t need to be milked for poignance. Loach’s movies come in one scale: life size. That’s what keeps them honest and, no doubt, what prevents them from achieving huge popular success.
If Loach’s style is sympathetically objective, Leconte’s “Man on the Train” casts a richly subjective spell. He takes us deep inside the minds and fantasies of its two wildly dissimilar protagonists, who, faced with the prospect of mortality, see in each other the lives they wish they had led. Jean Rochefort’s Manesquier is a retired teacher living a sedentary life in a sleepy French town, his roomy chateau cluttered with several generations of family bric-a-brac. His life is an endlessly repeated routine in which nothing truly eventful ever happens. His dormant fantasies of a life of adventure are stirred by the arrival of Milan (Johnny Hallyday), an aging criminal in a leather jacket who carries himself with an aura of weatherbeaten stoicism. As taciturn as Manesquier is chatty, he reluctantly accepts the older man’s offer of a room when he’s unable to find a room at the local hotel, and thus begins their peculiar opposites-attract relationship. Milan is waiting for his partners to assemble to pull of a bank heist, a job he contemplates with growing apprehension. Manesquier is facing heart surgery the same day as the planned robbery. Each longs for the things the other has–a life of stability and order, a life of daring and adventure.
The set-up has a dangerous symmetry, and one can easily imagine how it could have played like a facile odd-couple comedy. The beauty of it is in Leconte’s delicate tone, an artful mingling of the comic and the melancholic. He gets two superbly subtle performances from his stars, the camera so attentive that every tiny gesture reveals their thoughts. The soundtrack is worth noting: not only Pascal Esteve’s haunting score, its twanging guitar, mournful cello and classical piano the aural equivalent of oil and water, but also the subtle amplification of everyday sounds–the pouring of drinks and clank of silverware–that aids in transporting us inside this intimate cocoon of a movie. In its tone and scale, “Man on a Train” could be seen as a companion piece to “The Hairdresser’s Husband,” which also starred Rochefort. But this meditation on friendship, domesticity and regret has a loveliness all its own. It’s an exquisite miniature that shows Leconte at the height of his powers.
Two other foreign films well worth checking out: “L’Auberge Espangole,” a coming-of-age comedy set in a funky Barcelona apartment shared by students from all over Europe. Shot on video by Cedric Klapisch, who made the delicious “When the Cat’s Away,” it takes a little while to get rolling, but when it hits its stride, the clash of cultures and languages and sexual desires makes for a very tasty stew. Klapisch is a rising French star; his loose, lively charm calls to mind the Truffaut of “Stolen Kisses” and “Bed and Board.” Anyone who ever spent a summer in Europe in their college days will find themselves nodding in recognition.
“Respiro,” starring Valeria Golina as a bipolar mom whose eccentricities rattle the tradition-bound members of the remote Sicilian fishing village where she lives, is the first feature of director Emanuele Crialese. The film doesn’t quite add up to a successful whole and its romanticizing of manic depression is questionable, but from the very first image it’s apparent that Crialese is a born filmmaker. I was as happy to bask in her sensual, often lyrical images as I am eager to see what she does next. With luck, she’ll have a career as long and rewarding as M. Leconte’s and Mr. Loach’s.
