n paper, Tickets is a film student’s ultimate wet-dream. In reality, it is no more than a nondescript triptych of situational sketches—albeit a coherent and ultimately satisfying one—a modern-day portmanteau movie, a story that feeds on the dissonance of its segments and comes out stronger for it, a layered episodic novella that is as much about the three revered auteurs at its helm as it is about the subject it depicts, and—for the most part—a delightful movie to watch.

Tickets is, in truth, an experiment in structural tolerance, a sketch-piece nonchalant in its delivery and jaunty in its raison d’etre. And if artistic collaboration flings too often imply flustered uncertainty (not without reason and—let's be clear—cinema gets that far less than, say, music), Tickets reveals a strangely compelling synergy between its three stories. So instead of an international pastiche of sorts, what we get is a solid if at times disjointed photoplay that's more than just the sum of its parts.

Using an intercity train racing from Central Europe to Rome as the common denominator, each director moulds his own segment in a more or less distinct way: Olmi’s protagonist is an elderly pharmacist (Carlo Delle Piane) travelling home from a symposium in Austria; a hoity-toity, middle-aged widow (a chillingly pungent Silvana De Santis) on the way to her army-general husband's memorial service is the bull's eye in Kiarostami's off-base entry; and, finally, Loach's square-shooting segment confronts altruism and racial tolerance referencing—in typical Loach style—working class youth as three Celtic fans (all from the director's riveting youth-and-poverty themed Sweet Sixteen) make their way to Rome for a Champions League football match.


Amid all the kerfuffle, there is indeed something extraordinary about the the three stories–they are more character pieces than societal crititiques, and their candid humanity works best when you are not being told what to think. Despite what a premise of this sort could descend into, the focus is on substance rather than style—what isn't said is at least as engaging as what is shown on screen—and the payoff is honest, at times humorous, deep, and gleeful at the same time. But while the stories share a common setting (were they not all set on the same train, the three could easily hold their own as separate shorts—so dissimilar is their style), the same cannot be said for their emotional hauteur or ability to engage. Olmi's layered and emotionally rich segment—with all its passionate, nostalgic reminscing—plays like a late-stage Bunuel to Kiarostami's riveting psychological Herzogian animalism.

But there is something absurd about Olmi's unnamed professor, a gushing fabrication in the reveries he devotes to his ethereal assistant, recollections of candlelit dinners and romantic obession—the juxtaposition of such overwrought flashbacks doesn’t cut as deep as its premise suggests. The emotional stones it turns are genuine and touching, but it does so with almost gratuitous perceptiveness: why do we know so little about this enigmatic lady yet so much that seems to be going on between them?

The movie’s central piece (figuratively and litterally), though, is Kiarostami’s story. Never one to wallow in predictability, it is his segment that packs the biggest punch. Those familiar with Kiarostami's work will know how unconstrained his attitude towards narrative is. He further potentiates it here, by offering a story that is almost more a character study than an actual, well, story. And though you find yourself rooting for exactly the kind of blow-off Kiarostami exhibits, the buildup is so alluring you soon forget the explosive denouement. For each of Kiarostami's guileful intermissions, though, there is a verbose beam of moral adequation courtesy of Loach's shopworn realism. Indeed, he delivers the least satisfying of the three entries, an exploration of racial stereotypes so common in Contemporary British Drama™ it almost screams 'you have seen this before!'—and you probably have, more than once. The conflict between his three young protagonists—working class, Asda-employed street youth—and an Albanian family whose one young member steals their ticket, reeks of overdubbed torpor.

Not one to pack cinemas, Tickets is happy to engage in the kind of low-key rumination arthouse movies are renowned for—and it does so with gracious self-assuredness.