Maine-Ocean Express Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.5

Maine-Ocean Express Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 16, 2026

Note: This film is available on Blu-ray as part of Time to Play: Films by Jacques Rozier from Radiance Films.

Blu-ray sets offering the complete filmographies of any given creator can tend to be pretty huge, even overwhelming, affairs, like Ingmar Bergman's Cinema and/or The Complete Films of Agnès Varda. That Varda set may be particularly a propos when discussing this (much smaller) set, since both Varda and Jacques Rozier were both prominent members of the French New Wave, even if neither arguably rose to the global fame heights of, say, Jean-Luc Godard or François Truffaut. If Varda either fairly or unfairly got some reflected glow from her long marriage to Jacques Demy, one way or the other even she, as arguably underappreciated as she's been, was probably better known internationally than Rozier, who has continued to kind of be the "bastard stepchild" of the movement, consigned by fate and (sorry) critical assessments to what is perceived as a lower echelon, even if that perception is manifestly undeserved. Rozier is a fascinating figure one way or the other, as his approach toward Nouvelle Vague was decidedly different than his contemporaries (notably Varda, in fact), and despite a decades long career, he only ended up making five feature films, all of which Radiance has aggregated for this new collection.

Another rather long span, either nine or ten years depending on which source is cited, separates this film from its "immediate" predecessor, The Castaways of Turtle Island, just one indication the Rozier, despite or maybe because of certain excesses his productions seemed to encounter, wasn't in any big rush to increase his output. If Rozier's first three films, or at least the first two, might be generally characterized as "nothing much actually happens" , Maine-Ocean Express may somewhat ironically offer too much happening, albeit contextually within a typically Rozier-ian glut of disparate characters in scenic locations.

Somewhat as with The Castaways of Turtle Island, though I'd argue not quite as much, Maine-Ocean Express offers a more or less straightforward "narrative", at least within this director's "usual" confines (probably a wrong word, given Rozier's penchant for laissez faire during shooting). Quite interestingly, at least given Rozier's oeuvre to this point, there's an almost literary or at least linguistic tack this film takes as it documents the misadventures of a Brasilian samba dancer named Dejanira (Rosa-Maria Gomes) whose train trip on the titular line is beset with comic misunderstandings with two conductors and/or ticket inspectors, Le Garrec (Bernard Ménez) and Lucien Pontoiseau (Luis Rego), events which are exacerbated by Dejanira's inability to speak French. That predicament then introduces the fourth main character of this first section of the film, a no nonsense attorney named Mimi de Saint-Marc (Lydia Feld), who is not about to suffer arrogant train officials gladly.

Rather interestingly, and perhaps especially interesting structurally given certain penchants of Rozier, Dejanira, who would seem to be the focal character, kind of shifts to being a stand in for the audience, or at least something of an Everywoman, once the train ride comes to an end and Mimi's lawyering literally takes center stage, as she defends a rough and tumble sailor Marcel Petitgas (Yves Afonso) who, much as Dejanira did earlier, finds himself in trouble due to what might be called linguistic, or at least regional dialect, issues. In the "but wait, you also get. . ." department, this freewheeling escapade which teeters on the brink of Absurdist Theater, then completely unexpectedly and rather delightfully moves on to kind of reintroduce Dejanira in her musical guise for a few minutes before following the various characters in what amount to coda wrap ups.

Maine-Ocean Express Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Maine Ocean Express is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Radiance Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.66:1. Radiance sent check discs for purposes of this review, and so I'm not privy to any information on the transfer that might be included in an insert booklet, but a prefatory text card before the presentation states that this was a "4K restoration in 2019 by Hiventy from the original image and sound negatives". While detail levels are quite expressive throughout this story, at least in more fulsome lighting conditions, I wasn't quite as fond of the overall color timing here as I was of some of the others in this set. There's a slightly artificial yellowish tone at times that can, for example, skew reds slightly toward orange, but which do help some of the more evocative outdoor "golden hour" moments. Once again seaside vignettes provide some really beautiful outdoor locations. Grain resolves naturally throughout.

Maine-Ocean Express Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Maine Ocean Express features a DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track in the original French. Like The Castaways of Turtle Beach in particular, the score here has some Brasilian inflected moments even aside and apart from a brief if charming samba dance vignette that breaks out around 45 minutes before the end of the film. The variety of locations also provides good use of ambient environmental sound effects ranging from the click-a-clack of a train ride to some of the background water noises on the island. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available.

Maine-Ocean Express Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Bernard Menez (HD; 19:24) is featured in this 2008 interview. Subtitled in English.


• Lettre de la Sierra Morena (HD; 22:05) is a cheeky 1983 short from Rozier positing Don Quixote and Sancho Panza as tilting at the figurative windmills of the French film funding system.

Maine-Ocean Express Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Maine Ocean Express is an interesting example of what might be called "contained chaos", and it offers one of the more relatively straightforward narrative arcs of Rozier's quintet of features, though that relatively should probably be a cautionary adjective for the uninitiated. Technical merits are generally solid, though the color timing here struck me as a bit unusual. The two supplements are very enjoyable. Highly recommended.