May 9, 2003 | Charged with alternating currents of dry wit and existential grace, Patrice Leconte's Man on the Train is a subtly magical drama about the unlikely bonding of two men who come to see in each other the end of a road not taken.

Craggy-faced Johnny Hallyday, an aging European pop star (and occasional actor) once billed as "the French Elvis," effortlessly inhabits the role of Milan, the traveler of the title. In the dull gray of a November twilight, Milan arrives in a quiet provincial French town, obviously up to no good. Just as obviously, he has a throbbing headache. He seeks aspirin at a small pharmacy, where he meets Manesquier (Jean Rochefort), a retired schoolteacher who somehow manages to engage the taciturn Milan in conversation. For no apparent reason - other than boredom, perhaps, or a desire to hear something other than the sound of his own voice - Manesquier invites the stranger to stay in a spare room of his spacious yet gone-to-seed mansion.

Initially wary, Milan accepts the schoolteacher's hospitality only because the only hotel in the area is closed for the season. Over the course of a few days, the two men share meals, gaze at the stars, talk about nothing in particular and everything that is important. Milan admits that he is career criminal, with designs on the local bank. Manesquier, ever the gracious host, responds with a nonjudgmental nod and, quite unexpectedly, a ghost of a smile.

Each man becomes fascinated, and maybe a mite envious, while considering how the other lives. Manesquier dons Milan's fringed black leather jacket - and, for a brief, giddy moment, imagines himself a strutting Western hero. ("I always wanted to be a silent brooder," he confesses to his mostly silent, always brooding guest.) Milan slips into Manesquier's comfy slippers, shambles through the rooms filled with books and bric-a-brac, and finds himself amazed by his sudden contentment.

Milan feels so much at home, literally as well as figuratively, that when a student drops by for a lesson on Balzac while Manesquier is away, the usually taciturn criminal fills in. "I'll be your teacher today," he gruffly announces, easily launching into a blunt-spoken tutorial, even though he clearly has never read Balzac, or much of anything by anybody else.

This could be the start of a beautiful friendship. Unfortunately, just as chance has brought them together, coincidence will separate them. At 10 a.m. on Saturday, Milan will join a couple of confederates in their planned robbery of the local bank. At the same time, Manesquier is slated to undergo triple-bypass heart surgery. Neither man wants to keep his appointment. But, then again, neither man feels capable of avoiding the inevitable.

At 73, Jean Rochefort remains one of the treasures of French cinema, a tall and slender chameleon whose courtly manner and melancholy smile serve him equally well in romantic comedy and heavy drama. In Man on the Train, he infuses Manesquier with equal measures of elegant humor and wistful regret, playing the retired schoolteacher as a man who's reluctantly drawn to a final summing up, who takes a whimsically critical eye at all the evasions and compromises of a life that hasn't been fully lived so much as decorously maintained.

Manesquier's relationship with Milan, along with the appreciation each man develops for the other's lifestyle, could have been played for easy laughs in a broad comedy. But Leconte (Monsieur Hire, Girl on the Bridge), working from a finely tuned screenplay by Claude Klotz, is not interested in the conventional or the predictable. Instead, he attempts to tell a story of choice and destiny, solitude and friendship, with an artful mix of tragedy and comedy that ultimately achieves transcendence. Remarkably, brilliantly, he succeeds.