Lovers
on the Bridge (Les Amants du Pont-Neuf)
Not Rated
Cinema 21, 616 NW 21st Ave., 223-4515.
7 and 9:25 pm Friday-Tuesday,
additional screenings 2 and 4:25 pm, Saturday-Sunday, Dec.
10-14.
$6.
Some foreign films are so daring that they could only be made
outside of Hollywood. And then there are those Cineplex blockbusters
that could easily star Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan and only receive
attention because they are foreign. Léos Carax's
Lovers on the Bridge is both--an unusual film that
is pretentious, sappy and simplistic, yet also audacious.
While it is first and foremost a love story, at once cornball
and irreverent, it's also an oddity that sticks with you in
a most perplexing way.
The film's path to U.S. distribution is itself like a damaged
love story, complete with a frenzied past all its own. Filmed
in 1989 with all sorts of difficulties (an actor breaking
a leg, the director breaking up with his girlfriend/lead
actress, a producer dying, and horrendous budget problems),
the movie was released in France in 1991 to critical acclaim
but box-office failure. Premiering stateside at the 1992
New York Film Festival, it was generally regarded (in particular
by a dismissive Vincent Canby) as an ostentatious mess and
was too expensive to receive distribution in America. Enter
Martin Scorsese and Miramax, and, nine years after it was
made, a picture that many consider a misunderstood masterpiece
has finally been released in America.
The story concerns two lovers who literally live on a bridge:
the lovely Pont-Neuf in Paris. Carax recreated it along
with various areas along the Seine, such as the façade
of the Samaritaine department store and the Île de
la Cité. The ravishing, pre-English Patient
Juliette Binoche is Michèle, a woman who has recently
become homeless because of a soul-shattering breakup and
an eye condition that is causing her to go blind. She is
an artist but experiences blackouts while she draws. Her
lover--or rather, the one who adores her--is Alex (Denis
Levant), an apish-looking, lonely, alcoholic vagabond whose
only talent seems to be acrobatic street-performing while
blowing fire out of his mouth. Unlike Michèle, who
comes from a good family, Alex has no roots. He is a wild
animal with a huge, selfish heart. When the two meet, it's
not necessarily magic at first (although it is for Alex),
but as they grow on each other, a type of love develops.
The film then showcases this mad love with the couple enacting
passions both typical of and uncommon in a traditional love
story. She draws, he steals food for her, they get drunk
and collapse into spasms of laughter, they run around naked
(she leads him, but not by his hand) and, in what is now
the film's most famous scene, they enjoy fireworks together.
What is more emblematic of passionate love--or more hackneyed
a metaphor--than fireworks exploding?
This is a big, beautiful sequence--it culminates with Michèle
(very adeptly) water-skiing down the Seine while colors
crackle all around her--that does fill you with reckless
awe, but nothing afterwards lives up to it. To the film's
detriment and credit, that seems to be the point: These
two are lovers, but perhaps only for one night. When Michèle's
family begins searching for her (huge posters of her face
appear all over Paris), Alex, afraid she will leave him,
tears them all down. In the process, he burns a man to death
and goes to jail. Michèle then receives an eye operation
and becomes Juliette Binoche--elegant and ethereal, rather
than scruffy and dumpy. What will happen to them now?
I'm not sure whether you are supposed to believe the ending
answer, which simultaneously plays like a re-creation of
the bus scene from The Graduate and prefigures the
bow-of-my-love moment in Titanic (it appears that
James Cameron actually ripped off Carax). Critics have split
over this grand affair--some say this is true love personified
in all its visual glory, others say it's flashy melodrama
and cannot believe Binoche would fall for such a homely
creature. The film supports both perspectives, making it
maddening, mysterious and even stupid at times. The obvious
symbolic meaning of the bridge is that these characters
are people in transition. When they become more grounded,
they will be at odds. But they always appear to be at odds.
Does Alex love Michèle more than she does him? Is
she simply resistant because she has a lot to lose and he
nothing? Have they merely experienced a grand illusion?
If you allow this flawed film to get to you, these questions
will gnaw at you and, eventually, break your heart. Oh,
how very French.
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Willamette Week | originally
published December 8,
1999
|
