The Girl on the Train

Directed by André Téchiné

(Not Rated)

***

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A young woman falsely claims to have been attacked by neo-Nazis in Paris.

For his latest film, French auteur André Téchiné “considers a well-known tabloid story on a more human scale,” said Scott Tobias in The Onion. A dramatization of a true event that created an international media storm, The Girl on the Train tells the story of a young woman (Émilie Dequenne) who claims to be the victim of an anti-Semitic attack on a Paris commuter train—but later is exposed as a liar. Téchiné “brings clarity, maturity, and perspective to the case while still addressing all the thorny social issues” that arise in a city fraught with ethnic tensions. Téchiné fully explores the woman’s life leading up to her reckless lie, said David Fear in Time Out New York. But he divides the film into two parts—“Circumstances” and “Consequences”—and in the latter limits the repercussions of her actions to the “equivalent of a shrug.” Téchiné is after “something more elusive and ambitious” than simply chronicling the punishment such a lie provokes, said Manohla Dargis in The New York Times. He is interested in the complexity of the human character, and his film is a fascinating study of just that.