The Madness Express (2023) poster
2023 · comedy

The Madness Express

Directed by Olivier Van Hoofstadt1h 29m2023
  • cosy
  • kinetic
  • gentle
  • intimate
  • funny
Movie DNA

Cosy, breathless, gentle comedy, inventive in texture. Ambivalent, intimate, measured, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

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Sébastien, a conscientious and professional train inspector, dreams of being transferred to the South of France. To validate his transfer, he has to make one last routine run under the supervision of Madeleine, a slightly sociopathic inspector who won't let him go. That's when everything goes wrong: between a driver who thinks he's driving a fighter jet, a jealous colleague and passengers who are each crazier than the last, what was supposed to be a formality turns into the worst trip of his life.

Our read · The Madness Express (2023) reads as a cosy, breathless, inventive comedy entry — gentle in intensity, intimate in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

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The shape of The Madness Express

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want a chaotic French train comedy full of escalating mishaps.

ends warmyou’ll be fine aftera rollercoastergrips by minute 10attention 2/5breezes bysubtitles: full
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around
Heads-upcringe humiliation

Skip it tonightYou dislike farce or workplace comedy that gets too silly.

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
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