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Such a frustrating disappointment

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Did you people see the same film I saw?

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Rebecca Zlotowski's French drama 'Grand Central' stars Tahar Rahim as Gary, unemployed and desperate for work. He finds well-paid but dangerous work as a decontaminator of nuclear reactors across France. Gary is based at a plant near Lyon, living on a site with fellow co-workers. They all work, live and play as one.Spending so much time together, its inevitable that troubles follow. Gary complicates things further, by starting an affair with Karole (Lea Seydoux), the fiancée of a fellow worker who also works at the plant. Not only is his work life hazardous, but so too is his private life. Gary's desire to be close to Karole leads him to take more risks so that he can keep on working, risking his own life in the process.Gary and Karole's relationship is occasionally more of a backstory to the more interesting drama in the nuclear plant itself. Zlotowski illustrates how ingrained nuclear power is in France, where human contamination is not only inevitable but ongoing for its workers. The human cost is high, mass unemployment means a big queue of people waiting to be exploited, with no real security or prospects. Everyone is affected, so its vital that everyone works together, publicly and privately.All the actors play their parts well, the leads Rahim and Seydoux don't put a foot wrong but still you care less for Gary and Karole's relationship, and more for the plight of the workers. Its a shame the geiger counter often remains in the middle for 'Grand Central', where certain parts of the film needed to be fleshed out more to provide a more compelling story.

In Grand Central director Rebecca Zlotowski examines the dangers of unharnessed power, tracing a spectrum from the simplest to the most horrifying.Man can subdue animal power easily enough — when it's the mechanical bull riding contest in the bar. So too the old jalopy, the horsepower convertible, and the outlaw energies of young men, like Gary (Tahar Rahim) and his new friend, the pickpocket, who buy the vehicle from gypsies, another emblem of the unharnessed life. The trouble begins when the dangerous forces are sexual passion on the human scale and nuclear power on the societal.When Gary goes to work in the new Austrian nuclear energy plant, despite all the training, warnings and precautions, he — and others, older and wiser — are destroyed by it. His passionate involvement with Karole (Lea Seydoux), another plant employee, eventually shatters the social peace and causes Gary to take on even more radioactivity. The uncontrolled sexual passion and the inadequately controlled radiation power bring him down.The pregnant Karole rejects Gary in favour of her sterile so suspicious fiancé Toni (Denis Menochet) out of her fear. From Gary's frightening and destructive passion she shifts to Toni's security. The Gary and Karole love scenes usually play out in the plush countryside, as an escape from the sterile industrial plant -- an oxymoronic term if there ever was one. However fertile the setting and their sex, however, the lovers' extremity is frightening. That actual plant, incidentally, was completed just before Austria voted to ban nuclear power. Little wonder. For more see www.yacowar.blogspot.com.

'Grand Central' is a French film starring Tahar Rahim ('A Prophet') as Gary (a splendid French name), a man with a criminal past. It can't have been a very successful criminal career - Gary seems to own one set of clothes only - so it's probably just as well he is looking for honest work, which he finds at a nuclear power station. But accidents involving radiation - not to mention starting an affair with the fiancée (Léa Seydoux - 'Blue is the Warmest Colour') of one of his colleagues - mean things will get worse before they get better.This film nails its gender equality colours firmly to the mast in the love scenes between Rahim and Seydoux: she has to go full-frontal, while he shows no more than you'd see at a family beach. One would think a film directed by a woman (Rebecca Zlotowski, who also co-wrote) would be a bit more equal (either covering her up, or - preferably - stripping him off!) Apart from that I can't say this film excited any strong emotion in me: I didn't enjoy it, but to say I disliked it would be too strong - it was on the screen, I watched it, and when it had finished I got up and left the cinema. I can't even explain why I feel so indifferent to it: definitely a 'so-so' film.

A really worth seeing little french drama, who speaks - for the first time, as far as I know - about workers in the civil nuclear industry. And not the elite engineers, no, the simple and under paid workers, who have to struggle every day about their safety against all the deadly danger they are all exposed to. The characters study is very well done, in a very accurate way. The story besides is not the most important thing if it all. The usual love story: the gal to be married, her husband and the lover. Nothing new here, but the surrounding is worth. The film remains although a little confusing,and the end may let you a strange feeling. I have not found yet what exactly worried me about it...Not a usual film.