Directed by Jacques Rozier • 1986 • France
Starring Bernard Ménez, Yves Afonso, Luis Rego

By land, by sea, by air . . . In Jacques Rozier’s quirkiest comedy, a Brazilian dancer’s (Rosa-Maria Gomes) invalid train ticket for a journey from Paris to Saint-Nazaire sparks a shaggy-dog story that encompasses the adventures of a quick-tempered boatman (Yves Afonso), his highfalutin attorney (Lydia Feld), a scheming talent agent (Pedro Armendáriz Jr.), and several other memorable characters as they converge and disperse via various modes of transportation throughout a series of unpredictable coincidences. With the boundlessness of human adaptability as its lodestar, MAINE-OCÉAN EXPRESS covers a delirious swath of narrative ground, including the roundabout path that returns a hapless train conductor (Bernard Ménez) to his duties after he joins an impromptu samba session and nearly becomes “the next Maurice Chevalier.” Applying his long-take shooting style to a plot of episodic, anarchic zaniness, Rozier once more proves himself a master of making the patently absurd appear completely realistic, and vice versa.