Little big films

Alice and Martin, Train Birds

Critic Robin Wood has made a persuasive case that the greatest films -- Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie and John Ford's The Searchers, for example -- are cathartic and salutary, moving from darkness to hope, from pathology and dysfunction to some evidence of mental health. André Téchiné's Alice and Martin, at the Kendall Square, isn't a great film, only a pretty good one. But Wood's favored pattern is certainly at work, as poor suffering Martin, with Alice's insistent help, gropes toward a nibble of light.

The movie opens with Martin age 10, and being shuffled from the comforting home of his single mom (Pedro Almodóvar's Carmen Maura) to the estate of his gruff, hard, capitalist dad (Pierre Maguelon). You've seen this terrible uprooting in a hundred Victorian-era tales, from the Brontës to Dickens. But then the movie bolts 12 years ahead, and Martin (newcomer Alexis Loret) is racing out of his father's gates like François Truffaut's Antoine Doinel in The 400 Blows, taking off for the mountains, where he lives by poaching farmer's chickens, like Truffaut's Wild Child.

Eventually, Martin gets to Paris, where he shares an apartment with his gay half-brother, Benjamin (Mathieu Almaric), and a struggling violinist, Alice (Juliette Binoche). The shy, hardly speaking Martin gets lucrative (if improbable) employment as an Armani model, and he and Alice fall in love. They retreat to a flat by the sea in Spain, but there things fall apart. The pounding ocean beckons and Martin flirts with suicide, swimming farther and farther out. He's incommunicative and angry with Alice as he tries to break them up. But she holds on until, in a long flashback, he confesses his secret: he murdered his father, though the death was ruled accidental, by pushing the mean old man down a staircase.

The rest of the movie: Martin having a nervous breakdown, needing to confess, needing to deal with his guilt. Loyal Alice, now pregnant, standing by.

The acting ensemble is impeccable, and Téchiné (Ma saison préférée, Wild Reeds) is a skilled, veteran cinéaste whose first feature came out in 1969. But the story never quite ignites. Maybe Martin is just too much of an enigma. What remains in my memory are the sincerity of Binoche's performance, the mesmerizing images of the ocean, and the intense cinematography of Caroline Champetier, whose talent is capturing the special sensuality of French actresses' faces: here Binoche, in other recent movies Sandrine Bonnaire, Virginie Ledoyen, Catherine Deneuve, Sandrine Kiberlain, Isabelle Huppert.

A word on the incredible Champetier: she is the most important female cinematographer in the world, though her name is not known outside of France. Among her other screen credits: Benoît Jacquot's A Single Girl and The School of Flesh and Philippe Garrel's Night Wind. In 1998, I asked Jacquot about Champetier. "She's now past 49 and I've known her since she was 19, a student at cinema school and an interviewer on radio for cinema programs. She was very radical, and she has a frightening reputation in the industry because she is very demanding. Everyone admires her talents but is afraid of her, especially those who don't know exactly what they wish to do with the camera."

---

Peter Lichtefeld's Train Birds, which will be at the Museum of Fine Arts August 4 through 30, is a little film from Germany that quietly, subtly, draws you into the unusual microworld of its gentle protagonist, Hannes Webber (Joachim Król), a delivery-truck driver who memorizes European train schedules. He learns of a contest in northern Finland, the First International Competition of Railway Timetable Experts, and arranges a week off from work. However, a new boss says no and fires Hannes on the spot. Shocked, Hannes punches him out and takes off by train and ship, through northern Germany, Sweden, and Finland. Police follow after, as the wicked employer has been found dead in his office. Murdered by Hannes?

Much of Train Birds is a road voyage, which means that Hannes must learn along the way. He does indeed find that there's a world out there beyond maps; he even romances a Finnish babe, Sirna (Outi Mäenpää). Still, the movie would be a cheat if Hannes never got to the contest, so there's an amusing timetable competition in which each Trekker-looking participant must map the fastest train routes. Cute!

---

The most impressive American debut at Cannes this year was Things You Can Tell by Just Looking at Her, interconnecting LA stories featuring a stellar female cast: Calista Flockhart, Holly Hunter, Glenn Close, and, in an amazing performance as a jaded blind woman, Cameron Diaz. The writer-director: Rodrigo García, son of novelist, Gabriel García Márquez. This fine movie was on the way to Boston for a summer release. No more. "It's a great festival picture, but on a commercial basis it doesn't play very well," MGM/UA executive Larry Gleason told the Hollywood Reporter after seeing the negative preview-response cards.

In my view, Things You Can Tell could play forever in a limited release at the Kendall Square. Alas, it's being shipped immediately to Showtime.

Gerald Peary can be reached at gpeary@world.std.com

---

The Film Culture archive

---