Man on the Train

A man gets off the train in a small French town. Milan is quiet, armed, and there to rob the bank. The hotel is shut and he has nowhere to stay. Manesquier, a retired literature teacher he meets at the chemist's, invites him home. The old man lives alone, talks a great deal, and is due for heart surgery in a few days. The two spend a week in the same house. The idea is simple and it holds: each looks at the life the other has not lived. The teacher picks up the pistol, the robber puts on slippers and listens to poetry. What both want is to try the other's life, and the film brings them to the same day and the same hour at the end. Patrice Leconte directed. Jean Rochefort plays Manesquier and Johnny Hallyday plays Milan. Hallyday was France's biggest rock star and barely speaks here; the whole performance is in his face and his stance. The contrast is built into the language too: Rochefort builds long ornamented sentences and Hallyday answers in single words. Who it is for: anyone who likes quiet French two-handers and stories built on an encounter. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for events. The robbery is almost a pretext, the pace is very slow, and the choice made at the end will strike some viewers as too poetic.