I don't know how long the real Sud Express takes to
get from Paris to Lisbon, but the film of the same
name lasts 102 minutes and the experience feels like
three days.
“Sud Express” follows various interconnecting stories
of people who live along the train's route, in France,
Spain and Portugal. One of the stories directly
relates to the train: Two teens in Salamanca, Spain,
Rober (Javier Delgado) and Isa (Pilar Borrego) are
getting names for a petition to have the track moved
to make the town more wheelchair-accessible for Rober.
But most simply use the train to get to where they're
going. An Angolan in Lisbon, Mili (German A. Joao)
takes the train to find a new life for himself
elsewhere, Rashid (Hicham Malayo) heads to France to
visit his girlfriend and Tino (Tino Guimaraes) and
Lucia (Lidia Pinville) meet in Irun, Spain for a
romantic tryst.
Filmed in five different languages, (French,
Portuguese, Spanish, Basque and Arabic)
writers/directors Chema de la Peña and Gabriel
Velázquez clearly pay a lot of attention to
detail. David Azcano's cinematography is beautiful and
the two directors paint vividly different pictures of
each country. However, it seems as if de la
Peña and Velázquez took a learning annex
class on how to make an art film. Plot and character
development fall to the wayside in favour of long gaps
of silence and brooding: Rashid realizes his
girlfriend is cheating on him. Brood. Rober can't
bring himself to say goodbye to Isa who's leaving for
college. Brood. Silence. Lucia isn't sure she has it
in her to meet Tino. Brood. Silence. Brood. Brood.
Brood. Silence. You'd think their script was only 15
pages long.
Even Lucia's husband, Samuel, (Gerald Morales) a
xenophobic Parisian taxi driver who overcharges
foreigners for rides, makes racist banter and receives
fellatio from a local hooker he drives around, is
reduced to little more than a brooding lump in a chair
when he learns of his wife's infidelity. And the film
ends with a shot of a brooding dog on the train
tracks, without the slightest hint of sarcasm.
Until his comeuppance, Morales gives a riveting
performance as the bigoted Samuel. He has an energy
about him that makes his offensiveness entertaining.
When he starts babbling to the other taxi drivers
about all the immigrants coming to Paris to take
advantage of the welfare system, even they can't get
that annoyed with him, even though most of them don't
come from France.
Joao also delivers a strong performance as Mili.
Reduced to selling watches on the streets of Lisbon,
he travels to Futuroscope, a strange amusement park in
France, to explore new business opportunities. But
when he gets there, he finds the place deserted,
except for two taxi drivers waiting for potential
fares. His anger and disappointment as he pounds at
the locked door of the complex offers the only truly
heart-wrenching moment in the film.
But these two performances and the odd joke here and
there can't keep “Sud Express” from running out of
steam almost as soon as it begins. It's a film you
certainly can afford to miss.
“Sud Express” screened as part of the Contemporary
World Cinema program at the Toronto International Film Festival.
