
            The film begins with clips that track a telephone call between London and Geneva, where a French university student and part-time model, Valentine Dusot (Irène Jacob), is talking to her emotionally infantile but possessive boyfriend. During her work as a model, she poses for a chewing-gum campaign, during the photo shoot the photographer asks her to look very sad. While walking back home Auguste, a neighbor of Valentine's, drops a set of books and he notices that a particular chapter of the Criminial Code was open at random and he concentrates on that passage.While driving back to her apartment, Valentine accidentally runs over a dog. She tracks down the owner, a reclusive retired judge, Joseph Kern (Jean-Louis Trintignant). He seems unconcerned by the accident or the injuries sustained by Rita, his dog. Valentine takes Rita to a veterinarian, where she learns that Rita is pregnant. Valentine takes the dog home.The next day, she talks to her boyfriend over the phone and relates how she came to acquire the dog. He becomes angry since they initially met when she ran over his dog accidentally some years before, and wants her to take the dog back.While walking Rita, the dog runs off again and Valentine figures that it went home to Kern, where she finally finds the dog. He says that Rita is now hers since he wishes for nothing in life. Earlier that day she had received a lot of money in the mail and she figures out that it was Kern who sent her the money to pay for the veterinarian's bill, but he got the amount wrong. Kern goes inside to get some change but does not come back out. Valentine wanders into his house and finds him listening to his neighbors' private telephone conversations. Valentine is appalled and threatens to denounce Kern to his neighbors. Kern challenges her to do this and points out one neighbor's residence. At first, she goes to do so, but does not tell them anything, seeing that their daughter is also listening in on the conversation. She goes back to Kern and asks him to stop eavesdroping but he replies that he has been doing it all his life, but now he knows where to find the truth.Kern points out an attractive man to Valentine in his window. He suspects him to run the entire heroin market in Geneva but cannot hear his calls because he uses a Japanese phone. Valentine insults him and Kern concludes that she has a strong feeling against drugs, and after a bit of conversation Kern figures out that Valentine's feelings towards drugs stem from a piece of news in her paper and a photo of a young man, her brother, who discovered that he is not his father's son and has been using drugs for a year. Kern tells her that it shall make no difference that she denounces him for his spying, the people's lives he listens to shall eventually turn into hell. She leaves saying that she feels nothing but pity for him.While visiting Kern, Valentine also hears a conversation between Karin and Auguste, where they discuss if they should go bowling. Valentine covers her ears, but from the very little she heard she concludes that they love each other. Kern disagrees. That evening Valentine is alone at home and hopes that her boyfriend shall call but it is the photographer who calls, saying that her poster was set up that evening and asks her bowling to celebrate.Meanwhile, Auguste takes his exam and passes it and becomes a judge. Karin asks him if he was asked any questions regarding the article that was open when he dropped his books. Auguste says 'yes'. Karin gives him a fountain pen as a gift and he wonders what the first judgment he signs with it will be.That evening, Kern writes a series of letters to his neighbors and denounces himself, and the community files a class action suit against him. At the law courts, he sees Karin meeting another man. Earlier, Auguste had missed a call from Karin and tried to call her back but never hears from her again.Valentine reads in her paper a piece of news about a retired judge that spied on his neighbors and she goes to Kern telling him that she said nothing to anybody. He confesses that it was him just to see what she would do. He asks her in and shows her that Rita has had seven puppies. They discuss that on their last conversation she spoke about pity but he later realized that it was actually disgust. He wonders about the reasons why people obey laws and it turns out that often it is more on selfish grounds and from fear than about obeying the law or being decent. It is his birthday and they have a couple of drinks. During their conversation he reminisces about a sailor he acquitted a long time ago, only later realizing he had made a mistake, and that the man was guilty. However the man later married and had children and later grandchildren and lives peacefully and happy. Valentine says that he did what he had to do, but Kern wonders how many other people that he acquitted or condemned might have seen a different life had he decided otherwise; he sympathizes with them and with his neighbors who have been throwing stones at his windows, saying that in their circumstances and being them he might have done the same, but in his role as judge he never stepped out of his shoes and never really understood other people. He also suggests that being in a position of deciding what is truth and what is not is a lack of modesty and vanity on behalf of humankind. When the conversation turns to Kerns' past romantic life he avoids the question by telling her about a dream he had about her. Valentine tells Kern about her intended trip to England to visit her boyfriend. Kern suggests that she take the ferry.Meanwhile, Auguste is unable to reach his girlfriend Karin since graduation. One evening he goes to her place and sees her legs wrapped around another man. Distraught, he leaves. By chance Auguste sees Karin and her new boyfriend in a restaurant, he gets her attention but when she rushes outside to try to explain he hides from her. Kern calls Karin's personalized weather service and inquires about the weather in the English Channel, which she expects to be perfect as she is about to take a trip there (with her new boyfriend who owns a boat).The day before Valentine leaves, she invites Kern to a fashion show where she is modeling. After the show, they speak about the dream he had about her, where she was 50 years old and happy with an unidentified man. The conversation then turns to him and the reasons why he disliked Karin. Kern reveals that before becoming a judge, he was in love with a woman very much like Karin, who betrayed him for another man. While preparing for his exam he once went to the same theater where the fashion show took place and he accidentally dropped one of his books. When he picked it up, Kern studied the chapter where the book accidentally opened, which turned out to be the crucial question at his examination. When he broke up with his girlfriend he followed her across the English Channel but never saw her again, because she died in an accident. Later, he was assigned to judge a case where the defendant was the same man who took his girlfriend from him. Regardless of this connection, Kern did not recuse himself from the case, since the connection was only known to him and condemned the man, the judgment was legal but he subsequently resigned his post.Valentine takes her ferry to England, and Auguste is also on the ferry, although the two never quite meet each other. Suddenly a storm rises and sinks both the ferry and the boat with Karin and her boyfriend.In the final scene, Judge Kern views a newsreel report about the sinking, and learns that of the 1,435 passengers and crew, only seven survivors were rescued. By coincidence the survivors are the main characters from the first two films of the trilogy; Julie and Olivier from 'Blue'; Karol and Dominique from 'White'; and Valentine and Auguste, who finally meet for the first time, as well as an English bartender named Stephen Killian. As with the other movies, the film's final sequence shows a character crying - in this case, the judge - over the events that has transpired... but the final image replicates the iconic chewing-gum poster of Valentine.
    

Three Colors: Red


            
                It looks like we don't have a Synopsis for this title yet. Be the first to contribute! Just click the "Edit page" button at the bottom of the page or learn more in the Synopsis submission guide.
            
    

Amour

Agnes Varda: From Here to There

The Conformist

A Self-Made Hero

Confidentially Yours

Michael H. Profession: Director

Flic Story

The Train


            Jeanne (Maria Schneider) is a 20-year-old Parisian woman wondering the streets looking for an apartment to live for herself and her fiancée. She goes alone to look at an apartment in a region of the Left Bank. There, she runs into a middle-aged, obviously depressed man (Marlon Brando) who is also looking at it. Jeanne quickly identifies him as an American because of his thick accent while they are communicating in French. After a few minutes of silence and some quiet dialogue, he picks her up, backs her against a wall, rips off her panties and has sex with her in the deserted apartment. They are very passionate yet never introduce themselves. When it is over, they each go their separate ways.Jeanne goes to the Paris Metro train station to meet her fiancée Tom (Jean-Pierre Leaud), a young television documentarian who has just returned to Paris following an assignment. They walk back to Jeanne's apartment where she currently lives with her mother having taken care of her since her father, a soldier in the French Foreign Legion, was killed in action in 1958 in Algeria. Despite their genuine loving engagement to be married, Jeanne is unhappy and annoyed that Tom insists on doing a cinéma vérité documentary all about her life and of her father, who is a well-known war hero. He films everything she does.Meanwhile, the middle-aged American man, who is named Paul, returns to a flophouse hotel in a run-down part of the city where he ventures to his apartment and watches a maid wash blood off the bathtub and surrounding walls. The maid speaks to Paul about the fact his French wife, Rose, two days earlier committed suicide in the bathtub by slashing her wrists. Paul doesn't say much and goes to his room to be by himself.The next day, Paul and Jeanne rendezvous back at the vacant apartment. Paul lays out ground rules that they are never to reveal their names to each other and never to discuss the outside world or to talk about their pasts. They are to meet there twice a week only for sex and tell no one about each other. But Jeanne (who has some knowledge of English after overhearing Paul talking to himself about his miserable life) keeps trying to find out who the strange American man is. Paul is adamant and refuses to talk about anything for he only wants to have sex with her and nothing else. Jeanne, unhappy with her own personal life, agrees to their arrangement. They lease several items of furniture (couch, chairs, table, bed, etc.) and bring it to the apartment which Paul signs a lease under a false name.The following day, Paul meets with Rose's mother (Maria Michi) to talk about the funeral arrangements. Paul soon becomes furious with her, screaming and cursing at her in a mixture of English and French, after she tells him she wants Rose to have absolution from a priest. Paul does not think that a person who committed suicide should receive absolution because (in his mind) killing oneself is a mortal sin.Meanwhile, Jeanne takes Tom and his camera crew on a tour of her former childhood house and shows him all her antiques. She will not tell him about her very first love who was her cousin. Ironically, Jeanne's cousin was also named Paul (not the same man.)Back in the apartment, Jeanne and Paul meet again where Jeanne wants to talk about her cousin, but Paul angrily stops her, reminding Jeanne of their agreement not to reveal anything, not even about what she did during the day. However, Paul soon relents and agrees to let her briefly talk about her cousin on the condition that no names are to be used. Jeanne talks about her cousin being the first man that she ever had sex with and that it was awkward, but nice. Paul then talks about his youth in the American Midwest and his unhappy childhood. Jeanne is proud she got some information about him, but Paul hints that he wasn't telling the truth. Jeanne becomes angry and asserts that Paul is an egoist and correctly assumes that something terrible happened in his life to explain his need to vent his anger and rage by having a meaningless sexual relationship with her. Paul will neither deny nor admit that Jeanne is right about him. Fed up with his arrogance and egotism, Jeanne masturbates.Another day or so later, Paul visits Marcel (Massimo Girotti), a tenant who lives in the hotel/flophouse that he and Rose managed and operated. It turns out that Marcel was Rose's secret lover. Paul doesn't know what she saw in Marcel or why she killed herself.Jeanne continues to get angry with Tom over filming her wherever she goes. After another argument with Tom, she returns to the vacant apartment to meet with Paul again, wanting to have sex wit him. She is shocked when Paul sodomizes her with a stick of butter, and forces her to renounce the Holy family, the Catholic Church, and all that broke her will as a child. It is painful for her, but she obeys.Another day later, Jeanne is in her wedding dress with her mother and various relatives and guests at the wedding rehearsal. Jeanne becomes more frustrated and insecure with everything happening around her and she leaves the rehearsal and returns to the vacant apartment, still wearing her wedding dress to meet with Paul again. She tells him that she couldn't leave him; although she is engaged to be married to someone she insists she loves while she does not love Paul. After helping her change out of her dress and bathing her, Paul tells Jeanne that true love in this world doesn't exist. To find her true love, Paul says, she "must go up into the ass of death". He orders her to snip off her fingernails on two of her fingers and put the fingers "up my ass". She obeys. They are both delirious with passion.A little later, Rose's funeral and wake are held at the flophouse. Afterwords, Paul sits alone by Rose's coffin. He insults her dead body terribly over why she committed suicide and left him all alone. He then realizes that he never really did know her or the person that she really was. He cries. He calls her "sweetheart". He wished he knew why she killed herself and left behind no note or reason for the act. He wishes he could do the same. He pauses when a prostitute arrives at the flophouse with a client, but Paul chases them away. He follows the prostitute's client a short distance and assaults him before fleeing.A few days later, Jeanne arrives at the apartment only to find it deserted. The "mysterious American" (Paul) is gone. It would appear that he has left her for good. Tearfully, she goes back to Tom and asks him to come look at the apartment. After visiting the flat and looking around, Jeanne asks Tom if it would be a good place for both of them to live after they get married. He doesn't like it and thinks it smells due to a musky odor as if someone had recently had sex in the apartment. He insists that the two of them live somewhere else as adults and not as overgrown, oversexed children. Tom walks out, leaving Jeanne all by herself.A little later, while Jeanne is walking on a boulevard, Paul comes up to her. Jeanne insists that their relationship is over for she has decided to get married to Tom. (She defiantly tells Paul her fiancée's name after he angrily tells her "I said no names!"). Being the egoist that he is, Paul won't accept her decision to break up with him, and he finally begins to tell her all about himself and about how his wife committed suicide weeks earlier (without revealing his name or wife's name). Paul wants to continue their secret relationship of sex to purge his painful feelings about his wife's suicide. All he wants is meaningless sex because he does not want to feel anything at all.Paul and Jeanne spend the rest of the day getting drunk in a cafe where a tango dance contest is taking place. After Paul pesters her, Jeanne alternately tells him that she does love him, but that their relationship is over for she has still decided to marry Tom. They then join the rest of the tango dancers on the dance floor, where she masturbates him, but then runs off, telling Paul "it's finished!" Paul chases after her through the streets, telling her that it will never end.Jeanne runs back to her mother's apartment where Paul forces himself inside and tells her that he will never let her go. Paul tells Jeanne that he needs her in order to continue not to feel anything. It is here that Paul finally asks Jeanne to tell him her name. Just after Jeanne tells Paul her name, he lunges at her and she pulls out a pistol from a desk drawer (her father's military service revolver) and fatally shoots Paul once in the chest. Paul stumbles out to the balcony to view the sights of Paris one last time before he collapses to the floor of the balcony, dead. The final shot shows a shaken Jeanne rehearsing with herself over what to tell the police, as she prepares to call them, telling them that she does not know the man who assaulted her, or his name.
    

Jean-Louis Trintignant

Jean-Louis Trintignant Movies or Tv Shows (upto Apr 2024) - Watch Online

Your region:
USA

Fan Zone

Streaming Availability

Releases by Year

Top Genres

Average IMDB Score