By SCOTT A. MAY A near-brilliant piece of cinematic sleight of hand, "Roman de Gare" plants plot twists and time shifts into the mind of its audience, all the while following a simple, straight line. It's a remarkable ruse and a delight to watch.

By Soren Andersen, The News Tribune, Tacoma, Wash. Jul. 18--"Roman de Gare" has more twists and turns than a switchback mountain road. And it's likely to give you the heart-in-the-throat kind of feeling one gets on such a road as it navigates perilously through its plot's many convolutions.

By Phil Villarreal, The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson Jul. 17--Pierre could be the serial killer who's on the loose. Or he might be just an honest magician/ex-high school teacher trying to get by. He tells people he's engaged to femme fatale Huguette, which he's not.

By John Beifuss A tireless director from the French New Wave era who rejected many of the stylistic innovations and narrative experiments that characterized the work of such fellow countrymen as Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Lelouch has had exactly one huge international hit in 45 years of filmmaking: "A Man and a Woman" (1966), which shared the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and won Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Original Screenplay.

By Michael Sragow, The Baltimore Sun Jun. 6--Claude Lelouch created a blockbuster heavy-date film 42 years ago with A Man and a Woman. He crafts a light, enigmatically seductive mystery with Roman de Gare.