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Subway Stories: Tales from the Underground…"Love on the A Train" (1997)

Dir: Abel Ferrara

A Husband (Mike McGlone) and Wife (Gretchen Mol) both take the subway (in different directions) to get to their places of work.
On the day of the story it is their Anniversary and the Husband suddenly finds an attractive young Woman (Rosie Perez) rubbing up against him.
The next day, she does the same and these encounters, where neither of them speaks, become a regular occurrence for the next 9 months.
Then one day he decides to talk to her…

A cable TV produced anthology based on 10 true stories sent in to the HBO channel by the public which various writers then adapted, with each segment (all set on the New York Subway system) all sporting different actors and directors.
Ferrara directs story #9 "Love on the A Train".

Like almost all the other segments in the anthology "Love" (written by Marla Hanson an ex-Model, who also penned Ferrara's "The Blackout", whose career was cut short by an horrendous razor attack in 1986) ultimately has little to say at it's conclusion and is more about the ride than the destination (to use a train analogy).

There is a genuine fascination with the unusual sexual (and sexually unusual) liaisons that take place and the story (and the Cinematography by Ferrara regular Ken Kelsch that takes in Perez's figure with as much scrutiny as the Husband) plays very much on the fantasy most of us have experienced about an attractive stranger (of either sex) rubbing up against us in a crowded train compartment.

But the fact that it is a planned and orchestrated event causes mixed feelings in the viewer.
Part of the attraction to such an event would be the unexpected thrill of it happening and the sheer randomness of it and yet in that case it may never happen again and may have been nothing but luck, a risk the planned re-occurrence would eliminate.
And yet once it becomes a set-up event has not the thrill gone? Does it not become just another sexual event like any other (especially as the Man is married, so it's almost the same as a regular love making session, though with no actual sex, with his Wife) and does not the calculated planning mean that what was once an exciting, but unplanned and as such innocent, event become something akin to adultery?

With only a voice-over from the Husband and a scant 8 minute running time, it is to the credit of the script and Ferrara's straight to the point direction that so many questions and thoughts about what is unfolding trip through the viewer's mind.

It's ultimately for Abel Ferrara completists though as basically the direction could have been by anyone as the running time means Ferrara can't really put a distinctive stamp on the story. Though fans of Abel will spot some of the similar visuals in this and the Subway sexual liaison between Frank White and his Attorney girlfriend in "King of New York".