Compartiment de dames seules: A messy French farce that's hard to follow

Is this thing worth your time?

Honestly, only if you have a very specific appetite for old-school, stage-bound French theater adaptations. If you like your movies snappy and logical, stay far away. You will probably hate the constant shouting and the way characters just sprint in and out of rooms for no reason. 🚂

The whole movie feels like a play that someone forgot to adapt for a camera. Everyone is projected to the back row, even though they’re standing five feet from the lens. It’s loud, it’s frantic, and the logic is thinner than a piece of paper.

The absurdity of it all

The premise is essentially a nightmare version of a family gathering. Robert admits he once shared a sleeping car with a stranger, and suddenly he's convinced he's marrying his own daughter. The mother-in-law just rolls with it because, I guess, she loves chaos?

The way the characters react to the 'big reveal' is hilarious in a bad way. Nobody actually talks like a human being. They just sort of gasp and posture until the next scene starts. It makes Empty Hands look like a masterclass in subtlety.

Random notes from my notebook:

• The train set looks like it’s made of cardboard and pure wishful thinking.
• There is a moment where a character just stops dead to stare at a vase for way too long. Why? I have no idea.
• The dialogue is just non-stop, which is exhausting when you’re trying to read subtitles and keep up with who is shouting at whom.
• It feels a bit like El cura de aldea in its rural, talky energy, but way more stressed out.

The ending is predictably messy. It’s one of those movies that spends an hour setting up a huge problem and then solves it in thirty seconds with a shrug. Don’t think too hard about it. You’ll get a headache.

It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s definitely a time capsule of a certain style of theater-comedy. It’s not quite as weird as The Crystal Ascension, but it’s got its own strange rhythm. 🎭

Watch it if you want to see what people thought was peak comedy in the 30s. Or don't. I won't blame you.