Jacques Rozier
1986
By land, by sea, by air . . . In Rozier’s quirkiest comedy, a Brazilian dancer’s (Rosa-Maria Gomes) invalid train ticket for a journey from Paris to Saint-Nazaire sparks a shaggy dog story that encompasses the adventures of a quick-tempered boatman (Yves Afonso), his highfalutin attorney (Lydia Feld), a scheming talent agent (Pedro Armendáriz Jr.), and several other memorable characters as they converge and disperse via various modes of transportation throughout a series of unpredictable coincidences. With the boundlessness of human adaptability as its lodestar, Maine-Océan Express covers a delirious swath of narrative ground, including the roundabout path that returns an hapless train conductor (Bernard Ménez) to his duties after he joins an impromptu samba session and nearly becomes “the next Maurice Chevalier.” Applying his long take shooting style to episodic, anarchic zaniness, Rozier once more proves himself a master of making the patently absurd appear completely realistic, and vice versa.