Maine-Océan Express
With Bernard Menez, Luis Rego, Yves Alonso.
France , 1985, 35mm, color, 131 min.
French with English subtitles.
Jacques Rozier’s return to features after yet another long absence was the deserving winner of France’s Jean Vigo prize. Displaying Rozier’s usual improvisatory brio, Maine-Océan Express exudes an insatiable curiosity about what happens when people of different languages and cultures are thrown together. Beginning with a beautiful black samba dancer’s breathless dash to catch a train from Paris to the Atlantic Coast, the film introduces us in no time to a pair of conductors who discover that you can’t always play by the rules, a feisty woman attorney with a passion for semiotics, an unforgettable sailor with an hilariously impenetrable Breton accent (Yves Alonso playing Michel Simon playing Popeye), and an incredibly temperamental Mexican impresario.
