Directed by Ermanno Olmi, Abbas Kiarostami, Ken Loach

This is a portmanteau film, a form which joins together several stories by a sometimes spurious link, and is made up of three separate short films by different directors linked by the train on which they all take place and the overlapping of certain characters. Trains have been favourite scenarios of filmmakers forever. They're a natural location for enforced togetherness of strangers and the bringing of private relationships into the public gaze. They also have power as a metaphor through their divisions into class mirroring the society outside. All three directors have their roots in neo-realist humanist film-making tradition, and so it is this particular aspect which most interests them here.

In the first  section, by veteran Italian  director Olmi, an ageing professor (Carlo delle Piane) returning home from a business trip in the first class restaurant car muses on his yearnings for the attractive and lively assistant (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) who has been looking after him on the visit, intermingled with an epiphanic childhood memory.  Much of the section is in the form of a reverie, broken by the stark reality of the Albanian immigrants sitting on the floor in the corridor space outside, and the brooding, potentially brutal presence of an enigmatic group of soldiers.  It's a beautifully shot and acted piece, troubling and with a fine and subtle resolution.

The eminent Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami follows, with a bracing tale of a stout middle-aged woman (Silvana De Santis) with a beautiful young man (Filippo Trojano) in tow. Her behaviour is overbearing and demanding, but he meekly does everything she asks - what can their relationship be? An affecting little comedy of manners follows, with altering perceptions as we learn more about the character.

Last of all is the Ken Loach piece, about three Celtic fans off to Rome to watch their team, (one of them is Martin Compston of Sweet Sixteen), loud but lovable lads travelling on a shoestring, whose trip looks like falling apart when one of them finds he has lost his train ticket. (It's amusing that their strong Glaswegian accents have been thought in need of subtitles!) Again the Albanian family feature, but whereas in the Olmi episode they were used in a fine understated way, here they are put through every sentimental hoop. It's sad to say, but although Loach's intentions are honest and good, I found in the end that the immigrants were used and demeaned by his sledgehammer tactics.  Many aspects of the plot are implausible, which matters in this neo-realist tradition. I was particularly sorry to see the the ticket inspector, a sympathetic figure of diplomacy and grace under pressure throughout, suddenly turned into a caricature official halfway through this episode, merely for purposes of plot. The humour is heavy-handed, the characterisation suspect, the moral underscored so strongly that it becomes tedious and embarrassing. In the end everything has to be stated, nothing is left implied. And that's bad. But the film ends on a rather easily bought high note as solidarity between Roma/Celtic fans trounces the poor old officials, and there is at least a vibrant sense of life going on for the protagonists.
 
So, what to make of it as a whole? The train setting works. People are put into compartments in metaphorical as well as physical ways: for the professor in the first episode there is a sort of epiphany when his tender feelings give him the moral insight to cross the boundary from one to another. In the second part the woman's pretence of being a first class traveller is echoed by her imperious nature, all of which is taken away from her. Finally the ticket, the possibility of being the train at all, is something with far greater import for both the Albanians and for the football fans.
 
All three directors show their neo-realist roots - Loach being in some ways the most literally faithful, but the most uncomfortably polemic, Kiarostami capturing the fascination of genuine banal human interaction, and Olmi, to my mind the best, with his insight into the small dreads and hopes of the private mind.
Seen at Odeon Wardour St, London, December 2005