Known Stateside as the writer of LAST YEAR IN MARIENBAD/’61, this larky Alain Robbe-Grillet’s ‘meta’- espionage film, which he also directed, is cleverly worked out, if a tad too long to sustain its amusing conceit. Wily Kurant, fresh off lensing Jean-Luc Godard’s MASCULIN FÉMININ, gives it jangly allure with ‘stolen’ street shots and glistening surfaces on the eponymous train as a film producer/director team (plus secretary with tape recorder) spitball ideas for a cocaine smuggling thriller that might star . . . why, there’s Jean-Louis Trintignant in the corridor. And quicker than you can say action, we’ve cut straight into an ever changing narrative (two steps forward/one step back continuity) as the film execs brainstorm over changes to the storyline, with Jean-Louis playing either himself or a character in their film story. Or is Trintignant himself the character we’re following? Various plot possibilities all handled without a moment’s confusion (eat your heart out Charlie Kaufman & Pirandello) and with just enough scandalous S&M sex stuff in the scenes set in Antwerp to shock a 1966 audience into imagining they’re getting something extra naughty instead of something experimental & non-linear in time, place, story & characterization. Yet never becoming a dry intellectual puzzle. Good juicy fun most of the way.
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