 | Grand Central is a film about radiation plant workers' work-related danger to equal the tension of classics like ‘Wages of Fear’ and a clandestine love affair. |
| Grand Central is a film about radiation plant workers' work-related danger to equal the tension of classics like ‘Wages of Fear’ and a clandestine love affair. An aimless young man (Tahir Rahim) arrives at a town looking for any work available and finds himself at a nuclear power plant, joining the hordes of unskilled workers ferried from site to site around the country, monitors strapped to their chest to indicate radiation exposure levels. Whilst at the plant he is dangerously exposed to radiation and also the charms of the wife (Lea Seydoux) of one of his co-workers Director/writer Rebecca Zlotowski’s film owes much to 1950s melodrama, more concerned with being convincingly cinematic than convincingly authentic. | As seen through a story in which the little that does happen is tinged with the inevitability of serious consequences, the feature is deliberate and wonderfully intricate in its acts and imagery. Photogenic couple, the striking Rahim (‘A Prophet’) and seductive Seydoux (‘Blue is the Warmest Colour’) seem very well matched and have a great chemistry on screen and both provide excellent, subtle performances of passion and strength. Zlotowski skillfully catches the blue-collar underbelly of France in this fascinating reflection on the destructive nature of love. |