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| Luis Rego, Lydia Feld, and Rosa-Maria Gomes in Maine-Océan Express |
Cast: Rosa-Maria Gomes, Luis Rego, Bernard Menez, Lydia Feld, Yves Afonso, Pedro Armendáriz Jr. Screenplay: Lydia Feld, Jacques Rozier. Cinematography: Acácio de Almeida. Film editing: Marine Brun, Jacques Rozier. Music: Hubert Degex, Anne Frédérick, Francis Hime.
If I had to say what Jacques Rozier's Maine-Océan Express is about, which as a movie blogger I kind of have to do, I'd say it's about 130 minutes long. Forced to do better, I'd have to call it a screwball odyssey in which, although it begins and ends with two different travelers, the viewer is the Odysseus, forced to come to terms with a variety of wacky incidents. It starts with a Brazilian samba dancer (Rosa-Maria Gomes) boarding a train, on which, because she has failed to have her ticket stamped at the station, she is confronted by a ticket inspector (Luis Rego) who, because she speaks only a little French and English and he speaks no Portuguese, has trouble explaining what the problem is. He calls in his supervisor (Bernard Menez), who insists that rules must be followed and she must pay a fine, but has just as much trouble explaining the problem, until a lawyer (Lydia Feld), accompanied by her large black dog, tries to act as interpreter since she speaks a little Portuguese. Things get sorted out a little, and when they reach the town where the lawyer is scheduled to act in defense of a fisherman (Yves Afonso) who is being sued for an act of road rage, the samba dancer accompanies the lawyer -- for some reason I'm not quite clear about. Eventually, the samba dancer, the lawyer, the dog, the fisherman, the two ticket inspectors, and the dancer's manager (Pedro Armendáriz Jr.) all wind up on the Île d'Yeu -- please don't ask me why or how -- where things are sort of sorted out. It's goofy French nonsense in Rozier's style, which amounts to dreaming up an assortment of characters and a situation to put them in, and seeing what comes of it. I have a bit of resistance to this approach to filmmaking but I have to admit that I found myself laughing out loud once or twice.