Romancefest 2014: The Lovers on the Bridge

Let’s return to France for Leos Carax’s 1991 film THE LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE.

I remember reading Ebert’s review when the film finally saw release in the US about a decade after it was produced. So, going into the movie, I remembered thinking the review was interesting and that I’d be happy to finally see the movie.

Reading the review again, I see it is riddled with red flags. It’s not a negative review, but it does give an accurate idea of what you’re getting into. I had forgotten that, over the years.

In any case, THE LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE stars Juliette Binoche and Denis Lavant as homeless lovers who live on Paris’ oldest bridge, the Pont Neuf. She’s an artist who has given up on life because she is going blind. He’s an alcoholic who supports himself by street-performing as a fire-breather.

It all sounds quaint and quirky and everything, and it kind of is, in pretty little bursts, but taken as a whole, the movie is a big sprawling overblown mess.

Ebert’s review says Carax was inspired in part by L’ATALANTE, and I can definitely see that in the movie (especially in the closing sequence involving a barge). This comparison gives me a useful way to figure out what put me off about the movie, though. In L’ATALANTE you’ve got your quirky characters being cute and fussy and all that kind of stuff but it’s against a pretty realistic, gritty background.

Here, you’ve got movie-star beautiful Juliette Binoche pretending to be homeless while looking perfect, against a back drop that’s supposed to be the streets, but is a fairly beautiful representation of Paris. Yes, I realize bad stuff happens in pretty places to pretty people, I’m just saying this movie wants it both ways – to be about the fringe in a mainstream way, I guess, where the world is real enough to have homeless people in it but not real enough to have any circumstances for anything our lead characters do.