Domestic drama raised to the level of grand opera, Patrice Chéreau’s Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train is one-third of a masterpiece. Its first 45 minutes, set on a train from Paris to Limoges, are filmed with breathless energy, and it seems that as long as the film’s cast of disparate characters are confined to that enclosed space, Chéreau can do no wrong. On their way to the funeral of Jean-Baptiste, a tyrannical painter who instructed some, romanced others and exerted a distant, cruel pull on all of their lives, this crew of family, friends, lovers and students — some of whom have spent years avoiding each others — are crammed together as the last act of a professional troublemaker.

In a recent Village Voice interview, Chéreau related how he removed all exposition from the film’s first act during editing, which certainly makes for a bumpy ride. Not only does watching Those Who Love Me require keeping track of over a dozen characters with precious little information, it blasts pop music at you when you least expect it, at a volume equal to the dialogue. Eric Gautier, who shot the train scenes in hand-held Cinemascope, whooshes the camera from side to side with abandon, and the soundtrack is frequently invaded by excerpts from a taped interview with the late artist.

After a summer full of entertainment aimed at the visual equivalent of a fifth-grade reading level, a movie like Those Who Love Me Can Take The Train might take your head off. The only word for its opening is dazzling. While a demanding movie isn’t a priori superior to an undemanding one, it’s endlessly refreshing to encounter a movie that reminds you how satisfying it can be to be forced to pay attention. True, it’s a bit like starting The Brothers Karamazov halfway through, but it’s still a damn good read.

When your stomach settles after the initial lurch, it becomes clear that for all its enriching ancillary detail, Those Who Love Me is basically the story of two characters and the relationships that surround them. François (Pascal Greggory) is Jean-Baptiste’s disciple and onetime lover, a brutal, Dostoyevskian cynic who is fond of aphorisms like "Loving people means putting up with their shit." His boyfriend Louis (Bruno Todeschini) enters the film running and he’s forever trying to keep up with François. With facial hair too long to be stubble and too short to be a beard, François cultivates a look of careful bohemianism — a contradiction, of course, but one François feels equipped to encompass. An art critic by profession, he keeps the same distance from life as he does from art; he’s not neurotic enough to be self-conscious, but he’s imprisoned by his image of himself. When Louis breaks down and tells François he loves him, François can only respond: "It’s a little late for such declarations, don’t you think?"

Jean-Baptiste, we’re told, was "obsessed with Francis Bacon" because he could never paint violence himself. Instead, he seemed to engineer it in life and after death as well. Jean-Baptiste spent 10 years trying to break up the marriage between his nephew Jean-Marie (Charles Berling) and Claire (Valéria Bruni-Tedeschi), and days before his death, Claire broke the news to him that he had succeeded, or at least that she and Jean-Marie were separated. This, along with everything else, becomes a point of recrimination for the couple. "It was my place to tell him!" Jean-Marie remonstrates, furious that his uncle should have thought he’d won. Claire shoots back: "Then why didn’t you?" Bruni-Tedeschi’s anger here is as visceral a depiction of rage as I’ve seen since Ashley Judd threatened to gnaw off her own lips in Smoke; Claire is reduced finally to beating her husband while screaming an epithet translated as "Wimp!" over and over again (the word hardly seems strong enough). A decade’s worth of frustration, hurt and loss burst forth in a few seconds.

François and Louis’ relationship is further tested by the presence of Bruno (Sylvain Jacques, oddly reminiscent of MTV’s Jesse Camp), a spiky-haired lost soul who seems to be randomly wandering the corridors of the train. Louis spots Bruno passing his compartment and within minutes they’re nearly fucking in a cramped bathroom — believable enough considering the extreme circumstances. But Louis’ sudden declaration that he’s in love with Bruno, and that the three of them must work out a relationship together is absurd. All you can do is gape along with François when he asks "How long has this been going on?" and Louis replies, "Since the station."

Bruno’s presence, it turns out, isn’t coincidental; he’s had affairs with both François and Jean-Baptiste. (Man, that Louis sure can pick ’em.) Chéreau, and co-screenwriters Danièle Thompson and Pierre Trividic, seem not only fond of but insistent upon such bizarre coincidences. When Jean-Baptiste’s son shows up at the wake, now a transsexual named Viviane (Vincent Perez) whom no one recognizes, it’s as if it’s because that’s the only plot twist they haven’t used up yet. Once the movie leaves the train, its sense of urgency dissipates, and the series of quarrels that follow — some of which inevitably result in the unveiling of long-buried secrets — is an unworthy finish to a spectacular beginning.

In a house presided over by Jean-Baptiste’s twin brother Lucien (Jean-Louis Trintignant, who also plays Jean-Baptiste in the flashback tableaux that float in from time to time), Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train slides to its soapy conclusion. Chéreau and Co. are far too sophisticated to let their confrontations lead to catharsis or healing, but they have to push every relationship to the breaking point all the same. By the time the film winds to its lovely, orchestral coda, you’ve lost the sense, so acute at the onset, of who each character is. What the ending needs is not resolution but coherence, something more than a bubbling pot being stirred until it sloshes over. Perhaps they should have taken the exposition from the beginning and stuck it on at the end.

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