April 03, 2008
Roman de Gare
Storytime
In French, the term “roman de gare” is an idiomatic expression used to describe the mass market paperbacks sold in drugstores and airports (in English, see “bodice-ripper,” “pot boiler,” “pulp fiction”). It’s also the title of Claude Lelouch’s new film, which simultaneously emulates the genre and tears it apart. The result is a complex masterpiece, which combines clichéd storylines, then reinvents them, to create something we’ve never seen before.
The film centers around a mysterious protagonist played by Dominique Pinon, whose unusual features are familiar to American audiences from the films of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro: he played an obsessed spurned lover in Amélie, a clown in Delicatessen, and a horde of tiny men in The City of Lost Children. Casting him as a romantic lead is a bold move by Lelouch, one of many subversive elements at work. Roman de Gare follows Pinon through a Greatest Hits of recycled plots: beautiful-troubled-woman-given-a-ride-by-a-stranger (with a captivating Audrey Dana as the damsel in distress); please-pretend-to-be-my-fiancé-for-my-parents; escaped-serial-killer-still-at-large; murder-at-sea. Lelouch maneuvers the story in such a way that, even with these narratives, which we can practiaclly recite from memory, we’re never entirely sure of where we’re being led, who to trust, who the protagonist is, or even— most brilliantly— whether we’re watching a comedy or a tragedy. With a score which rotates between upbeat French chansons and ominous Hitchcockian strings, we never quite feel entirely safe or entirely fearful; in other words, we’re completely engaged from start to finish. The tone shifts so rapidly, and yet so seamlessly, that, although Roman de Gare doesn’t claim to be anything other than one continuous narrative, it feels like a deftly executed series of intersecting vignettes.
Fanny Ardant stars alongside Pinon as a bestselling author of romans de gare, which adds yet another layer for us to sink our teeth into. Normally, meta-stories about how stories are created are self-indulgent at best (and outright cop-outs at worst), but Lelouch manages to work the theme in without losing the exhilarating pace or delicate mystery of his protagonist’s journey. If any movie can pique our interest in a story about storytelling, it’s Roman de Gare, which displays such a mastery of the art.
