The Man on the Train
- Jean Rochefort: Monsieur Manesquier
- Johnny Hallyday: Milan
- Jean -François Stévenin: Luigi
- Charlie Nelson: Max
- Pascal Parmentier: Sadko
- Isabelle Petit- Jacques: Viviane
The Second Life of Monsieur Manesquier ( original title L' Homme du train ) is a Franco- German -British- Swiss film from the year 2002.
Action
A stranger (Johnny Hallyday ) increases in a French village from a train. As it turns out later, he wants to rob the bank in place. In a pharmacy he meets the retired teachers Manesquier (Jean Rochefort ), who lives largely alone in a somewhat run-down house and a heart operation is imminent. Manesquier takes Milan to live with him and soon both realize that they want to be able to lead the life of the other. Milan would have liked his calm, Manesquier believes to have failed a wild life. You have three days to think of the other life, but in the end has to try each submit to his fate. While Manesquier told ( a life of missed opportunities ) the other his life, Milan listens and shows more symbolic of ( he incurs in the house Manesquiers whose slippers on ) that he would have liked to live life Manesquiers. In a restaurant Manesquier goes once out of himself and lays in with a guests provocative young man who, as it turns out, a former student, and out of respect for the authority of the teacher immediately beigibt small. Milan lives in the house Manesquiers like a pensioner who pursues his plan to rob the local bank, but on. So both men go your own way to the end and are in the last minute of her life, although spatially separated in thought but when each other. A poetic, a melancholy film of gentle tones.
Criticism
" Chamber -like game staged story about the search for happiness and the desire for a fresh start. The attempt to stage two archetypal actors of French cinema against the grain succeeds only limited. "
" Leconte's THE SECOND LIFE ... on the other hand was the first film in which the director Hallyday begged to be allowed to work with him. And so let him Leconte like an old, tired lion trot through the French countryside, playing with affectionate irony, the tough guy clichés of his career by finally puts him in felt slippers, a pipe puffing, in front of the fireplace of a bourgeois mansion - even legends have eventually come to rest. ' THE SECOND LIFE ... was my first film as an actor ,' the 62 -year-old confessed but then modestly the " Cahiers du Cinema ". "
Awards
The Second Life of Monsieur Manesquier won on the Film Festival in Venice in 2002, the Audience Award for Best Film; Jean Rochefort won the Audience Award for Best Actor. Director Patric Leconte was nominated for the Golden Lion. Hallyday was awarded the Jean Gabin Prize for his role.