Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here. I'm glad to be running two reviews for this film on the site today, and I'd run more if I had them. This is an amazing film, a transformative film, and I'd suspect you'll hear that from pretty much anyone who's had the experience. I don't care how hard you have to look... try and find this one. You'll be glad you did. Here's cat-burglar John Robie to tell you why...
There’re these two people, they’re both pretty lost and then they find each other, and then they fall for each other, and then they need each other and each other ends up being all that’s ever mattered. There’s the story of The Girl on the Bridge. It’s an old, old story. When it’s done right, it’s the best story.
Love stories are the easiest types of movies to make and the hardest ones to get right. One cheat and the whole thing comes crashing down, and it’s real easy to cheat because it’s real hard to talk about love and not sound like an asshole.
The Girl on the Bridge, the new (at least in America—the rest of the world saw this last year) Patrice Leconte film, makes love look it’s supposed to look. All the sadness is there, all the happiness is there and none of the triteness that most American movies would lob onto the subject. The film goes into limited release on Friday. It’s worth searching out. Leave it to the French to come up with a romance that works so well. Food and film, man…
Gabor finds Adele on a bridge over the Seine in Paris. Her life’s a mess and she’s ready to jump. He offers her a solution; don’t jump and become his target in his knife-throwing act. At least that way, if she dies, she can go out in style. It becomes real obvious real quick that he’s just as broken as she is, and the two take off through Europe to perform their act. That’s the story. That’s all the story needs to be. The simple stuff is the best stuff when it’s done right, and this one’s done right.
It’s easy to make an audience want to be with a gal because she’s hot. It’s a hell of a lot harder to make an audience want to be with a gal because she’s really, truly beautiful. It goes way beyond the look and the light. If the gal falters, takes one misstep as a character, then we’re not going to buy into who she is and the whole thing turns to whimsy. The gal here never, ever missteps.
You could say that Gabor (Daniel Auteuil) is brilliant because of the awful sorrow that’s settled just under his skin, because he’s graceful and clumsy all at once, because he’s nowhere near the buffoon he thinks he is and nowhere near the master others know him as. You could say all those things, and you’d probably be right. I think he’s incredible because in the end, in the beginning and always he’s just a man. He’s sad like a man, he’s enraged like a man, he’s awful and happy and hopeless like any man, or at least like any man should be. He’s a man. He’s not simply a mechanism to move the story along, and that’s what makes him great.
So by that reasoning Adele (Vanessa Paradis) should just be a woman, a simple, sad woman who’s just as messed up as Gabor. She probably is, but it’s awful hard to be totally objective when speaking of her. I can use all the flowery language I want to try to cover up the simpering self that totally fell for Adele in The Girl on the Bridge, but hell…why? Broken girls are always adorable because they’re always there asking for help with sad little eyes, and I can’t think of a character in any recent movie that’s as adorable as Adele in Girl on the Bridge. Adorable pout, adorable hair, adorable eyes. Even the gap in the teeth. Adorable. Once she gets up on the board, becomes the target and begins her little game with Gabor, though, adorable becomes a weak and woefully under-powered word. Adele becomes a woman I’ve never even come close to dreaming about.
The main characters never kiss and they never have sex. They only really touch each other in the final frame, yet The Girl on the Bridge is one of the sexiest damn movies that’s graced American screens. I love straight sex played out in front of me just as much as the next guy (probably a lot more…) but it’s awful hard to make what’s blatant erotic. The Girl on The Bridge is amazing in the way it teases us. Yes, knife-throwing here is a metaphor for making love. Yes, Adele ends up writhing away on the target board as Gabor flings knives at her, and yes Gabor sweats and moves and shakes like a nervous lover. It might be the obvious way to go, but the execution here leaves you absolutely floored. Not only are the scenes beautiful—the movie is in black and white and just incredible to look at—but they’re each bursts of passion, incredibly erotic. They’re dangerous, the danger is titillating, and it’s like pouring fuel on the fire. Last Tango in Paris got the down and dirty, carnal desire sex right. The Girl on the Bridge gets the making love right.
Thankfully—hugely thankfully--your head and your heart don’t have to try to forget what they know for you to enjoy the movie. Like all good films it gives us credit for being thinking, breathing things, and like all great films it shows us what lives look like at their most honest and pure. It’s about two people that love each other because it’s all they have and it’s all they’ll ever need, it’s about how we can find some sense of who we are if we meet just the right person, and it’s really about the best thing I’ve seen all year.
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