Grand Central
Director: Rebecca Zlotowski
Talent: Tahar Rahim, Léa Seydoux, Olivier Gourmet, Denis Ménochet
Release Date: 18th July 2014
In making a film about the “invisible” working-class and migrant labour that sustains Western capitalism, writer-director Rebecca Zlotowski chooses, admirably and significantly, to set her love-triangle at the heart of a nuclear reactor in the Rhône valley, in which our characters are, as a consequence of their jobs, slowly subjected to radiation poisoning. In doing so, those self-same chauvinistic, Front National narratives of contamination that prop up anti-immigration discourse are flipped and given literal significance, hanging over proceedings like a spectral fog. It is said that film is a visual medium, but Grand Central makes a case for the spatial and atmospheric in its constitution, creating a vivid, sometimes nauseating sense of danger from the slightest of raw materials. Zlotowski’s skill in developing a sense of place, of physicality and of class is not matched by her romantic storytelling, but this is nonetheless an extremely affecting and unusual film.
Words: Oisín Murphy-Hall
For more cinema coverage this month, check out our reviews of:
Hector and the Search for Happiness, The Rover, Pudsey The Dog: The Movie, Boyhood, The Grand Seduction, Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon, Finding Vivian Maier & Joe
