Roman de Gare
Directed by Claude Lelouch. France. R. Running time: 103 min.
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"Roman de Gare — a witty yet ultimately poignant guessing game in which nobody is quite what he or she seems — is arguably Claude Lelouch's best film. Its title translates as "airport novel," and Lelouch pays homage to the lure of those high adventures by mining one of his typically extravagant plots for both humor and pathos, raising provocative questions of identity and of the confusion of truth and fiction. After a flurry of foreshadowing moments, the film settles on an attractive but insecure Paris hairdresser (Audrey Dana), who is ditched at 3 a.m. at a gas station by the fiancé she is taking to meet her parents. Along comes a middle-aged man (Dominique Pinon), whom she persuades to pose as her fiancé to save face with her family. But who is he? He could be a runaway high school teacher with a wife and two children back in Paris. Or he could be a serial killer. The second half of the film focuses on Pinon and the timelessly elegant Fanny Ardant, never better as a bestselling novelist whose encounter with Pinon sets off a series of dizzying developments, culminating in a breathtaking turn of the tables that explodes like a string of firecrackers. The freshness and originality that flow through "Roman de Gare" now burst into full flower, revealing the director's depth and perception." (Kevin Thomas, LA Times)
Click here to read A.O. Scott's review in the NY Times.