# Amants du Pont-Neuf, Les (1991)

### reviewed by
Steve Rhodes

    THE LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE
    A film review by Steve Rhodes
    Copyright 1999 Steve Rhodes
    RATING (0 TO ****):  * 1/2

THE LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE (LES AMANTS DU PONT-NEUF) has all of the right ingredients for most hard core art house patrons. It stars a famous, gorgeous foreign actress (Juliette Binoche) who boldly appears quite unattractive. It is a well-meaning story about people living on society's margins. It features unhappy and unsympathetic characters whose actions dare you to like them, but whose circumstances are so dire that you feel guilty if you don't. Finally it has a director who figures that, if he doesn't proceed with excruciating slowness, you will not appreciate the gravity of the characters' situations and the importance of the material. In short, it's the high-minded type of film that will have those less dedicated filmgoers heading for the exits before the first 15 long minutes have elapsed.

To be fair the actors try hard, perhaps too hard, and the images, especially those of the steel-gray Parisian twilight, are handsomely filmed. Writer and director Léos Carax does accomplish his mission, crafting a serious, albeit sometimes unbearable, view of two homeless lovers who live on a bridge.

As the story opens, Alex (Denis Lavant) is lying in the road, scratching his forehead on the pavement. As blood begins to seep through his skin, a car runs over his leg. The police pick him up and take him to a combination hospital and shelter. Like most of the Parisian homeless in the story, he's mentally disturbed and a substance abuser.

Once he's released, he returns to Paris's famous Pont-Neuf bridge. The bridge, which is closed for restoration, is currently the home for some homeless people. A gruff and angry Hans (Klaus-Michael Grüber) functions as the bridge's homeless landlord and drug distributor.

Much to Hans's consternation, Michèle Stalens (Binoche) takes up residence on the bridge without his permission. With a patch over one eye, a cut and bruised lip and a splotchy complexion, Binoche's normally striking beauty is completely masked. Michèle and Alex strike up an almost instant friendship and like nothing better than swigging cheap wine from identical large bottles until they obtain the desired degree of inebriation.

With realistic background sounds and little dialog, the movie has the feel of a documentary. When words are spoken, they are usually in whispers, and they rarely form anything approaching a complete sentence. The largely plotless story does include a small mystery about how the artistic Michèle came to leave her previous middle-class lifestyle.

Eventually, when the two lovers develop a scheme to drug and rob outdoor cafe diners, the snail's pacing of the movie does pick up a bit.

It's hard to criticize a picture like this with its lofty intentions, but it is even harder to sit through it all. This much can be said, the director does make living an indigent and alcoholic life look pretty unappealing. The problem is that in the process he makes watching the movie just as undesirable. Spending two hours in a dark theater with Alex, Michèle and Hans is fairly torturous.

THE LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE runs a very long 2:05. The movie is in French with English subtitles. It is rated R for violence, language, sexuality/nudity and substance abuse and would be acceptable for teenagers only if they are older and mature.

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