Trans-Europ-Express

Best known as an experimental novelist of the 1950s and screenwriter of Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad, Alain Robbe-Grillet was also a filmmaker in his own right, and Trans-Europ-Express—a lighthearted 1967 riff on spy movies, erotica, and storytelling—was his most popular, audience-friendly work. A director named Jean (played by Robbe-Grillet himself) and two members of his production team board a train to work out the story for a film about drug trafficking. When actor Jean-Louis Trintignant briefly ducks into their cabin, he is quickly cast as the main character, Elias, a smuggler who not only is involved in a big score with a shady criminal but also harbors a bondage/rape fantasy that he acts out with a prostitute named Eva (Marie-France Pisier). Robbe-Grillet continually plays with the overarching gimmick as scenes are constantly revised and rewritten by the trio, causing the movie-within-a-movie to rewind and twist back on itself as multiple versions emerge and the fiction crosses over into the threesome's actual surroundings. Robbe-Grillet laces humor throughout the crime narrative, making it pulp fiction with a modernist flair. Never before released on home video in the U.S., Trans-Europ-Express boasts an excellent remaster from original elements for its domestic Blu-ray and DVD debuts. Extras include an interview with the director. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)