Simply put, LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE is one of the most exhilarating motion pictures of the 1990s. In building a replica of the famed Parisian Pont-Neuf bridge, Carax's film became the most expensive French film ever produced, up to that point. This budget controversy threatened to overshadow the film itself, which has slowly begun to garner the proper recognition it deserves (thanks to Martin Scorsese and Miramax's American rerelease in the summer of 1999). Lavant portrays Alex, a drug-addicted, fire eating homeless man who lives on the deserted bridge, which is being restored for the French Revolution Bicentennial Celebration. When Michele stumbles into his life, a desperate, passionate relationship unfolds. Michele is an artist who is losing her eyesight due to a bizarre disease. But plot isn't the issue here. The sheer visual spectacle is. Shifting from brutal documentary to romantic melodrama to surrealism, Carax's THE LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE is an electric, powerful, poetic picture.
Rating: R (MPAA) Rating Reason: violence, language, sexuality/nudity and substance abuse Runtime: 126 minutes DVD Code: Region 1 US, CA Genre: Foreign Films Color: Color Rating: DVD Features:
Region 1
Keep Case
Full Frame - 1.33
Audio:
Dolby 2.0 Surround Sound - French
Juliette Binoche, Denis Lavant, Edith Scob
Leos CaraxChristian Fechner
"...The film's many emotional ambiguities come together like an intricate jigsaw puzzle..." -- Rating: B+
Entertainment Weekly (02/18/2000) "...LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE bursts with unflinching rawness....Dizzying camerawork and editing and brutally honest acting keep the emotions powerfully real..."
Box Office (08/01/1999) "...Moving..."
USA Today (07/02/1999) "...A love story that dances in between the magical cinema-worlds of Jean Vigo and Stanley Donen..."
Film Comment (11/01/1992) "...A go-for-broke dazzler that takes constant chances, dares to go over the top, indulges in one anticlimactic scene after another only to make such risks pay off all the more at the finish..."
Los Angeles Times (07/2/1999) "...It has grand gestures and touching moments of truth..."
Chicago Sun-Times (12/03/1999) |