Starring Dominique Pinon and Fanny Ardant, and Audrey Dana. In French with English subtitles. Rated PG. Opens Friday, June 20, at the Park Theatre

French filmmaker Claude Lelouch has called Roman de gare “a little ode to lies”. It’s a sly understatement from the venerable director of A Man and a Woman. Although it’s true that his latest film is held together by little more than a few skillfully interwoven threads of deception, the results are intoxicating. In short order, we’re introduced to a jet-setting mystery writer (Fanny Ardant), a chain-smoking beautician (Audrey Dana), and a tantalizingly duplicitous man (Dominique Pinon) whose true identity holds the key to everything. To varying degrees, none of them are who they seem.

The film’s English title—Crossed Tracks—hints that these three diverse lives will inevitably mesh. But Lelouch, who doubles as co-
writer, also insists on a risky intersection of different genres. Is this a murder mystery? A love story? A bittersweet rumination on the folly of human nature? Actually, if you don’t mind being subjected to some clever sleight of hand, Roman de gare manages the admirable trick of being all three.

At first it seems as if we’re in for a continental whodunit. Bestselling novelist Judith Ralitzer is being questioned by the French police about the mysterious disappearance of her personal assistant. As Judith, Ardant lures us into the tale with a sense of cool seduction. From there, we meet Dana’s Huguette, a neurotic hairdresser. Deserted by her fiancé in the middle of a road trip to see her parents, the distraught Huguette is offered a ride by a vaguely creepy stranger.

The attractive Huguette is initially turned off by the persistence of her Good Samaritan. As portrayed by Pinon, the man’s quietly invasive manner is as unnerving as his geeky appearance. (Pilon’s thumb-shaped head makes him look a little like a walking light bulb.) But he wins Huguette over by playing on her obsession with celebrity. As it turns out, she’s accepted a lift from a man who’s either an escaped serial killer, a runaway husband, or a ghostwriter who’s tired of remaining anonymous. The clever script never fails to keep us off-balance. But even after all the deceptions are revealed, we’re left with a truth that’s far richer than any mere guessing game can deliver.