"Roman de Gare (Crossed Tracks)" *** (103 minutes)

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Jumped over to The Charles to catch Claude Lelouche's latest. Lelouche, best known for his 1966 double Oscar winner, the brillant, "A Man & A Woman", delivers a stylishly fine mystery thriller that will have you guessing until the end. Judith Ralitzer (Audrey Dana) is a well-known novelist, who, at the start of the film is being interrogated by the police as to her possible involvement in the death of her ghost writer. From here we meet a love-scorned hairdresser (Audry Dana)who enlists the help of a stranger (Dominique Pinon) who agrees to meet the hairdresser's family and to assume the identity of Audrey's fiancee. No one is who they appears to be while the fun is in trying to figure out the motives of all the principals as their paths are continually crossed (hence the title). My only problem is that Lelouche tries to jam in too many ironic plot turns and it loses itself somewhat along the way. However, all in all, the film is worth seeing and will have you captivated for most of its 103 minutes.