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Elias (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is a drugrunner, bringing drugs from
Paris, France to Antwerp, Belgium via the Trans Europ Express. He's a
rookie though, so his Belgian boss Frank (Charles Millot) puts him through
a variety of tests, some of them pretty bizarre, and even hooks him up
with prostitute Eva (Marie-France Pisier), who Elias loves to play S/M
games with without knowing she's actually part of the gang he's working
for. Eventually, Elias gets so confused by the tests his gang is putting
him through that he accidently gives his game away to cop Lorentz (Henri
Lambert), whom he believes to be a member of the gang as well. It's only
after that that he learns he has now been accepted into the gang, and his
first assignment is to go back to Paris and return to Antwerp with another
suitcase full of drugs. Once back in Antwerp, Elias has to realize that
Eva is actually in league with cop Lorentz, and during a bondage sex game,
he strangles her to death to save his own hide. Lorentz figures this is
exactly what he had needed to bust the drugring Elias is working for wide
open, so he sets up an S/M show in a nightclub starring a girl resembling
Eva remarkably - and Elias is lured to it like a bee to honey ... and he's
shot by Frank before he can be apprehended by the cops. Now the
story of this film is far-fetched, frequently strains the suspension of
disbelief beyond breaking point, and is full of plotholes - but all of
this is 100% intended, because there is another dimension, another layer
of reality to the film, in which a director (Alain Robbe-Grillet himself)
discusses the very story of the film, which is supposed to be the story of
his next movie, with his two assistants while travelling the Trans Europ
Express to Antwerp, and while they are discussing the plot, the director
tries to iron out all plotholes and unevennesses (not always successful),
and frequently, interesting subplots are dropped just like that because
they wouldn't have made much sense in the context of the film's main crime
thriller story. The result of all this is a fascinating game
with genre elements, the hommage of an intellectual to mindless pulps, and
also great fun to watch, basically because Alain Robbe-Grillet has managed
to make his film an intellectual play on genre-filmmaking without being
brain-heavy, and there is no question that this man loves the very pulps
his film is inspired by, and while my synopsis might make this film sound
rigid by concept, it's actually a narratively free-lowing piece of cinema
that is easily to be enjoyed. Recommended, actually.
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