A threatened suicide gives way to death-defying thrills and then romance in the French fable Girl On The Bridge. This is an odd, compelling and wonderfully sensual film that reinvents notions of luck in matters of love.
Darkly comic, Girl was directed by the maverick filmmaker Patrice Leconte, of Monsieur Hire, The Hairdresser's Husband and Ridicule fame. His next picture, Widow Of St. Pierre, has just been announced for the Toronto filmfest.
Girl On The Bridge was originally entitled La Fille Sur Le Pont. While the English version is a literal translation, it sounds more coy, more romantic in French. That's a Gallic thing and an alluring mystery to us (and probably the French too). Of course, the film also plays here in its original language with English subtitles.
Leconte's little gem arrives with accolades. It was nominated for eight Cesars -- the French Oscars -- and the sublime Daniel Auteuil won as best actor.
It also boldly strides across the screen in lambent black and white, giving the film a surreal retro 1940s atmosphere, even though it is set in contemporary times.
Auteuil plays a melancholy carnival knife-thrower whose career has stalled. Then he saves the girl of the title (wild child Vanessa Paradis) from suicide. After a series of bad relationships with loser men, she was ready to leap off a bridge and exit this mortal coil.
Now renewed and although obviously not without serious emotional problems lurking in the recesses of their minds, the two set out on an adventure. He enlists her as his new assistant -- the sexy thing he'll throw his knives at to amuse patrons in small towns and on cruise ships.
Initially, their relationship is platonic, albeit 'on-the-edge' with all those sharp blades whizzing out of his hand and by her head. She, being an insatiable sexpot, has affairs everywhere they go. He grows to love her, need her, want her.
The film is almost campy, yet Leconte is so nimble he gets away with anything and everything. For instance -- and it's a huge moment in the movie -- there is a scene with Paradis on a wheel and Auteuil armed with his knives that is one of the most gloriously sexy scenes in recent cinema. Once again, I can't really explain why without making it sound trite or contrived -- it just is!
Leconte has that knack. In his earlier films, even the creepy sex-murder mystery Monsieur Hire, he transformed unlikely characters into sensual beings and plunked them down in situations that defied surface analysis.
Which is the quality that gives all his films a powerful dynamic, an earthy combination of sex and danger that propels people forward in the stories.
(This film is rated AA)
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