Review: The Girl on the Train
Let it be said first and foremost that Emily Blunt is nothing short of superlative as Rachel Watson in the film adaptation of Paula Hawkins' best-selling novel The Girl on the Train. Eyes smeared with mascara and tears, cheeks blotched, every pore vibrating with self-hatred and masochistic obsession, Blunt's Rachel is haunted and hollowed out, an often fearsome specter rifling through broken, false and missing memories of the life she once had.
"She's what I lost. She's everything I want to be," Rachel says of Megan Hipwell (Haley Bennett), the beautiful blonde on whom she fixates as she rides the commuter train from Ardsley-on-Hudson to Grand Central Station. Rachel spins perfect lives for Megan and her husband Scott (Luke Evans), both of whom prove to be imperfect people. Megan is a ticking sex bomb, more focused on escaping her suddenly suburban life and seducing her therapist, Dr. Kamal Abdic (Edgar Ramírez) than her marriage, motherhood or any semblance of a career.
Megan works as sometime babysitter for Anna (Rebecca Ferguson), who has not only supplanted Rachel as Tom's (Justin Theroux) wife but also provided him with the baby that Rachel never could, an inability that resulted in her alcoholism and the destruction of their marriage. Anna still lives in the home that Rachel once shared with Tom and, during the sections involving Anna, the film resembles a riff on Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca (Ferguson at times even recalls Joan Fontaine, who starred as the second Mrs. de Winter in Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 film adaptation). Anna may seem the most secure of all, but Rachel is everywhere whether it be in the tasteful furnishings of Tom and Anna's home, the incessant calls and texts that come at all hours of the day and night and, most troublingly, holding Anna's infant baby in the backyard. It's no wonder why Anna sometimes wishes she was still the other woman, stealing time away with Tom instead of worrying about the safety of their baby.
The central engine of the film lies in the disappearance of Megan and Rachel's involvement in the mystery. Rachel herself fears the worst, having woken up covered in blood after confronting Megan the night before after getting into an alcoholic rage after witnessing Megan kiss a stranger. But what exactly does Rachel remember of that night? Did she truly see Megan in the tunnel last night? Perhaps it was Anna? And what of Megan's husband Luke, who is revealed to be prone to jealousy, possessiveness and anger, and immediately suspected by Detective Riley (Allison Janney). Or Dr. Abdic who is taken in for questioning based on Rachel's testimony that he was the man she saw kissing Megan?
In truth, the mystery is not particularly compelling (many will most likely identify the murderer long before the reveal). Neither was the mystery of Gone Girl, to which both the novel and the film have been compared, but it was elegantly told on paper and intriguingly executed on the screen. Screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson retains the prismatic structure of Hawkins' novel and there's a certain skillful subtlety in the way she draws out the thematic undercurrents of obsession, interchangeability, abuse, and dependency. Yet the film feels superficial and one has to place the blame on director Tate Taylor (The Help, Get on Up).
Taylor obviously knows how to elicit the best out of his actresses, but casting Theroux, Evans and Ramirez was not necessarily the best choice - all actors immediately telegraph sleazy danger, which erases any ambiguity about their characters and renders them all one-dimensional. Their performances and Taylor's uninspired, almost by-the-numbers treatment enhance the cheap and lurid air atmosphere that chokes and degrades the film and, by extension, Blunt's phenomenal performance. It's a shame and rather infuriating because one is left with the feeling that another director could have done far more with the material. Think Todd Haynes, a magnifier of fierce passions masked by placid surfaces. Or Almodóvar, no stranger to the dark habits of women on the verge of breakdowns, nervous or otherwise. Or even Paul Verhoeven, master of kinky and subversive trash.
The Girl on the Train
Directed by: Tate Taylor
Written by: Erin Cressida Wilson; based on the novel by Paula Hawkins
Starring: Emily Blunt, Rebecca Ferguson, Haley Bennett, Justin Theroux, Luke Evans, Edgar Ramírez, Allison Janney, Laura Prepon, Lisa Kudrow
