Everybody loves movies based on true stories. I can only imagine it has something to do with the thrill of the idea that what they are watching has really happened and could even happen to them. I absolutely understand this concept which is why I don’t quite understand “The Girl on the Train.”

I’ll get back to the aforementioned sentence as I go on but first I’ll lay the story out for you, the reader. Jeanne (Émilie Dequenne) is a bored young girl. She has a very close and admirable relationship with her mother Louise (Catherine Deneuve), who seems to look out for her even though she is old enough to look out for herself. When Jeanne meets a man while out rollerblading — which she seems to do a whole lot of — her mother seems uneasy but decides to trust her daughter and supports her as she’s out. After an obvious setback waiting to happen, Jeanne finds herself back home with an unwarranted feeling of neglect thus causing her to make a mildly self-destructive decision.

I do apologize for the lackluster plot summary but I assure you it’s not all my fault. This may have made the headlines in France but it’s more like page 9 in Hollywood. I’m not familiar with André Téchiné’s work, but he has been around for a while and it shows in his desperate attempts to appeal to a new style of filmmaking. The direction is sporadic, with many different effects and styles that fail to blend in the beautiful way he was going for.

“The Girl on the Train” falls in an odd category. It’s not exactly a bad film, it’s just not worth seeing. I don’t mean wait for it on DVD, I mean don’t bother seeing it. Story quality is all too important to take a backseat, and that’s exactly what happened.

Sometimes the scenes in a film just fail to achieve any sort of connection needed to bring the picture together. This isn’t the first time it’s happened and it won’t be the last. The upside is that I learned something from this film — rollerblading is still an acceptable means of transportation in France. In an effort to wrap this up all I have to say is in the future we can only hope they save the “based on a true story” tag line for stories worth reliving or we are in for a bumpy ride.