It's script's soap opera tendencies may be wearying, but Rebecca Zlotowski's Grand Central isn't about what happens. It's about how what happens affects those to whom it happens. Had Zlotowski been more generous with the length of her film, she might have been able to allow for her acute sense of empathy to be as keenly felt as it is applied. As Grand Central stands, though, its bluster and its brio capture the bewilderment of its protagonist with verve, as he is so quickly accepted into a social fold after taking on work at a nuclear power plant. Those with less to live for often make more out of life, and these low-paid men in high-risk employment have no need for negativity - they are aware of the detriments of living so close to others when relations are sour. Nor does Zlotowski judge, crafting scenarios as they might appear to a fly on the wall or a deity observing from above - she is the camera, the nonentity in the space, and she permits her actors to shape their performances as they see fit. The vibrancy this spawns in the collective work of the cast is striking and compelling. It's messy too, but in a refreshingly familiar manner. All of the soothing neatness of conventional cinema, in this regard much more soap opera-esque than Grand Central, has been excoriated from the naturally unkempt dramatic core of everyday existence. If this is administered, then, to storylines straight out of the cheapest paperback novel, that's of little consequence, since Zlotowski's film is, as aforementioned, not about what happens but about how that affects those to whom it happens. And there'd be no honest way to tell that story otherwise.
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