Loverboy’s Fallon Gold reviews new thriller The Girl On The Train… and tries to explain what it’s like coming face to face with your screen love. 

Would I like to attend a press conference where one of my main movie star crushes will be present? Uh, ok, go on then. Cue this reporter getting very giddy. So professional. But. I had the chance to be in the same room as Emily Blunt and to look on her gorgeous face and hear that delicious voice all in the real and up close.

It wasn’t just about getting to stare at an actress. It – coincidentally – had something to do with her new film The Girl On The Train. As with many things that seemingly everyone on the planet has done, I had been an exception and not read the super-duper bestselling book that this film is based on. In fact, I hadn’t even heard of it. As someone who is supposed to have her finger firmly on the zeitgeisty pulse, I do miss these epic cultural moments, occasionally. But it wasn’t to do with Hollywood divas or glitter or poodles, so why would I bother? Someone who has read it told me it was a book and that it’s great and it has a massive twist. I do love a good twist.

Oh, I ‘joked’ about Emily spotting me in the crowded room and falling for me. In my head I would come up with the perfect question to ask her that would make her smitten (although I only thought of one, about Streep, Cruise and Piggy, that was so dated it would only have potentially got a laugh if I’d also managed to find a time machine to take us back to 2011 when The Muppets film came out). But I knew that I could only speak to her, only raise my hand and say, ‘Miss Blunt can I ask you…’ if I actually had a valid question in my head at the moment of the conference, witty or profound or vaguely interesting or whatever.

I figured I could always ask the director, ‘having worked so closely with Emily, do you think she might fancy me?’

Quite frankly, when something like this happens the word ‘Professional’ goes out of the window and all you can do is put your energy into trying not to be overtly (or annoyingly or scarily) unprofessional about the situation.

I went to the press screening of The Girl On The Train (more on that in a mo) and the first bit of tension surfaced as I watched the film. I tried to shake it off… but seeds were sewn. There on screen was Emily, magnificent as Rachel. But there was also… her.

On my way to the press conference, I realized that I hadn’t got the actual location information. I thought I remembered where it was being held and so got on google maps and made my way there. In the hotel I asked where the press conference was, to be met with a blank stare. I was at the wrong hotel. I ran across the road to another hotel, clutching at straws. It was the wrong hotel.

I had only a small amount of time to get there. Would I get to see Emily Blunt in the gorgeous flesh, after all? Or were we doomed never to be in the same room at the same time?

I began walking faster, the time ticking away. I thought I knew vaguely where the bloody place was so I went into the next hotel in my path. Hysterically sprinting up to the concierge, I asked if there was a press conference. He said, ‘oh that sounds exciting. What kind of film?’ I looked blankly then stuttered, ‘a mainstream film.’ He said, ‘oh can I come? I love mainstream films.’ I said, ‘if you get me there on time, anything’. But in my head I was screaming, ‘I’ve no time for flirting with you! I’m supposed to be flirting with Emily Blunt right now!’ There wasn’t – of bloody course – a press conference there but I had managed to remember the name of the room it was being held in, if not the name of the sodding hotel. So he – the darling – googled it. And informed me it was just a-ways up the road. I thanked him and as I bolted out the door he ran after me asking, ‘what’s the film?’ I semi-angrily spat out the title. A romcom moment if ever there was one. But this wasn’t the rom I wanted and I had no time for com.

Now. I don’t do running. I just don’t. So this was a very special occasion. And as I was holding my boobs and jogging it did strike me that, as well as a romcom, I was inside my own thriller: will the intrepid lady reporter make it to the press conference on time and get seen by her silver screen crush?

I got to the hotel and was oh so relieved to see a sign with TGOTT Press Conference on it. I wheezed my intention to the concierge and she pointed to a lift and told me the floor. I all but collapsed in that lift and… I made it.

And we all waited and waited cuz, press conferences.

But… when they finally filed in and Emily entered and took her seat, something happened. My eyes were continually drawn away from her and towards the beautiful, sexy-scowling face of… Haley Bennett.

Shock twist!

I couldn’t stop staring at her and could swear that Haley was staring at me. She has very narrow eyes so it was a bit hard to tell, but still. It did occur to me at one point that she might have read my review of The Magnificent Seven and be giving me evils… but I chose to believe that she was eyeing me up, instead.

The cast of The Girl On The Train laugh uproariously at this reporter’s witty repartee. Or something.

I kept thinking about her in the film. Yes, Blunt’s Rachel is a gloriously captivating character but I was much more interested in Megan… and, tbh, Bennett and her tendency towards nudity.

So there I was, torn. Emily, my long-time love. And Haley, my new, punched in the head sideways new crush. But then it occurred to me: I’m poly. I don’t have to choose. They can both have me.

Impossible infatuations aside, The Girl On the Train is a great film. The characters are compelling (and extraordinarily played by a magnificent cast), the story is gripping and the twist is a doozy. I asked director Tate Taylor how you approach a film with such a twist aware that a huge percentage of the audience would have read the book and already know it. He told me that you just have to concentrate on making the characters as believable as possible, get them to draw you in so you are in the story no matter what you already know, or don’t, going in. Good answer.

Blunt’s depiction of alcoholic, obsessive Rachel will hopefully be ringing award bells because she totally deserves it. A dream role that she has not over-chewed or over-stewed. Bennett’s Megan is a complex character who, the actress declared, is not likeable. But I beg to differ as she makes her sympathetic because of those complexities and ‘flaws’ (and not just cuz I fancied her). I tend to identify with damaged, enigmatic, multifaceted women, anyway. It’s shot so that we’re inside the heads and broken souls of three women (there’s also Anna, played by Rebecca Ferguson). The dark, electro score by Danny Elfman is truly ominous, and the pacing pulls you in and spits you out with its shocking revelations that dawn on us from the POV of Rachel’s foggy, blackout-prone mind.

This film deserves to be a massive hit and will be one of those that lingers with audiences well after we’ve departed the cinema. So… if you see Haley Bennett, tell her to look me up, yeah?