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France | 2007 | col |  103 mins | dir. Claude Lelouch, with Fanny Ardant, Dominque Pinon, Audrey Dana| cert. 15

'Roman de gare' translates as 'airport thriller' a term for the kind of enjoyable but disposable book one buys to while away the time on a long flight. Lelouch's film fits that description but is so beautifully done that it ends up as something much more impressive. In the opening sequence writer Judith Ralitzer (Fanny Ardant) is interrogated by the police about her missing ghost-writer; radio reports announce the escape from a prison of a serial killer known as 'The Magician'; a hairdresser is abandoned by her boyfriend at a roadside petrol station and picked up by a man who seems to know Judith; and a missing school teacher leaves his wife and children. But what is real... and what is fiction? Confused? Well, this is just the starting-point for 100 minutes of twists and turns, zigs and zags, red herrings and crossed tracks. Deceptively layered, extremely wry and intriguingly misleading, Crossed Tracks is a wonderful return to for the Oscar-winning who, in keeping with the spirit of the piece, shot the film under a ‘nom de plume’, only revealing himself as the director at its Cannes premiere.

Roman de Gare - Crossed Tracks: English-subtitled Trailer

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