“Do you think they have tellies in the police station?”

Tickets is a film compromised of three stories that all take place aboard a train traveling from Central Europe to Rome. The first segment from Italian director, Ermanno Olmi focuses on an elderly professor (Carlo Delle Paine) who can’t really concentrate on the way home due to distracting thoughts about his seductive personal assistant (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi). The Professor replays instances of their encounters in his mind and interprets kindness and attention as much more than they actually are. The second film from Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami concerns the relationship between a cantankerous widow (Silvana De Santis) and Filippo (Filippo Trojano), her young male traveling companion. While the woman is clearly obnoxious, several incidents of forced contact with other passengers reveal evidence of her underlying nature.

The gem of the three films (a 5 star segment), however, is Scottish director Ken Loach’s story. Three raucous Celtic fans are on the train to Rome to see a soccer match. Attending this match is a goal of a lifetime, but their goal is threatened when one of the young men loses his train ticket. The question is soon raised whether the ticket was lost or stolen. The dilemma of the missing ticket brings the three Scots in contact with a desperate family of Albanian refugees and causes the young soccer fans to make a moral choice. The three lads are working class supermarket employees from Glasgow, and while it’s obvious that these lads don’t have much, even they recognise that they have a great deal more than the Albanians who sit just a few seats away. This superior examination of class and moral choices presents Loach at his best–he’s a phenomenal–and terribly underrated director who consistently produces excellent films.

All three stories are weaved together very cleverly. The Professor sits in the first class section of the train but catches glimpses of the disenfranchised refugees. The widow has a second-class ticket but shoves her way into the first class section. The stories–and their diverse subjects–represent the changing face of Europe, and a subtle threat–embodied by the soldiers who board the train–runs through the film. This is a post 9-11 world–with terrorist threats haunting the travelers as they near their destination. In English (Scottish dialect), Albanian, and Italian with English subtitles.