Read More @HJ Previews: Trailer, Overview David Bruce, Webmaster

A "roman de gare" is a sort of trashy book that you would take on the train or to the beach -- interesting and engaging, but without great substance. For the most part Claude Lalouch's film Roman de gare fits that bill. It is an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours. It has enough suspense to draw you in. The characters are interesting. The plot is intriguing (to a point). But by the time you're finished with it, you know that as pleasant as it may have been, there is little real meat on the bones.

The film opens in a film noir, black and white scene that is very brief, but sets the stage for what is to come later. The first act (which takes up about the first half of the film) focuses on various characters. There is a popular author of romans de gare who is working on her next book. There is a quarrelling engaged couple on their way to the woman's parents' house in the country. We hear on the radio that a pedophile rapist-murderer known as "The Magician" has just escaped from prison. A woman reports her husband has been missing for three days. Then we meet a man with a scruffy beard who is hanging out at a service station cafè and gives a little girl a bouquet of paper flowers that has materialized in his hands.

All this happens in a rather disjointed manner, leaving us wondering who all these people are, especially the bearded man. Is he the escaped murderer, or the missing husband, or, as he brags, the ghost writer for the famous author? When circumstances lead to him going with the woman of the engaged couple to meet her parents pretending to be her fiancè, we begin to worry just what might happen.

In time we discover who he really is, which leads the story into the second and third acts, which are less engaging and although there are plenty of twists along the way, most viewers can guess how it will come out, even if they aren't sure of the means of getting to that point. As I said earlier, the plot is intriguing to a point. In the first part of the film -when the viewer is constantly off balance waiting to see who these people really are - is when the suspense pulls us in and drives the narrative. Half way through the film, when we learn who the characters are, the plot fails to provide the suspense that a really good roman de gare would have to keep us turning the pages to see what happens. Instead it seems like one of those books that, after you've read half way through, you feel compelled to finish just because you've already invested so much time.

The basis of the suspense in the film is the uncertainty about who various characters are. They could be good, but they might be evil. The potential exists for both. That dual potential carries through the film. We can't always know who the good guys and bad guys are. One can't tell from outward appearances the quality of various people. In fact, the potential always exists in real life to be good or evil. It exists not only in the people we meet, but within each of us. The ways we develop those potentials make life far more interesting than a roman de gare.