The Bridge (1999)
Mina is a movie buff with a husband, Georges, who's out of work, and a 15-year-old son, Tommy. While Mina works part-time as a domestic for Claire Daboval, the family is terribly short on money, so when Georges is offered construction work on a massive bridge project, he immediately accepts, even though the job site is far away. One day, while taking in a matinee screening of West Side Story, Mina meets a man named Matthias, an engineer associated with the bridge project. It's love at first sight for the both of them, and while Mina has no desire to hurt Georges, who is a good and decent man, she has found another good and decent man whom she loves even more. Tommy, on the other hand, has to deal with this crisis in his parents' marriage while he's sorting out his own infatuation with Ms. Daboval's daughter, Lisbeth.
Watch Trailer
Cast
Reviews
I really enjoyed this movie when I saw it recently on the Sundance Channel. I really dislike about 95% of the films provided by Hollywood and I wish we could have more films like this.I have always liked Depardieu films and this is just one more example of why I like him as an actor. It is just a character study of how several people try to get through life. In fact, it is probably how most of us get through life and you rarely see it portrayed in films from Hollywood.I know that most people that I know would not like a film like this, but I am sure thankful that I get to see them.
Despite the wonderfully wrenching performance of the boy (Stanislas Crevillen) this Bridge lacks foundation to support the relationship that turns on a tear. Motive matters. And a thoughtless and irresponsible and unsympathetic role Bouquet is saddled with, besides a 16th arrondissement visage in a maid's role, does not allow the viewer to ultimately care, though the sympathies do lie with the boy and the dad. This tranche de la vie is a bit stale, n'est-ce pas?
I had the misfortune of being on a 7 and a half hour flight with this movie as one of my only forms of entertainment. I have seen and liked Gerard Depardieu in the past, so this is not an anti-French or anti-foreign film bias, just to get that out of the way. The plots was horribly weak, and gave no explanations for the events that took place or why the characters did what they did. The characters themselves were as shallow as a puddle in the Sahara. The main character has an affair for no other apparent reason than the fact that the man in the movie theater next to her cried. She fights with her son over the affair, they are in the heat of the argument, and she says "I just want you to be happy", and just like that the argument is over and everything's fine between them again. Perhaps things get lost in translation, as it was dubbed, but it would have to be just about the entire script that was lost in translation. The ending is a giant non-sequiter, and if possible, even more of a disappointment than the rest of the film. I was better entertained by the airline's "external temperature update" screen than by this film.
Carole Bouquet is a revelation as a woman approaching middle age (a long way from her Bond girl origins), and Charles Berling and Gerard Depardieu are in their usual top form. But the screenplay, adapted from a French best seller, but with a radically changed ending, is not the French BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY as some claimed. The screenplay tells an all too familiar story that even its excellent actors and technical team cannot overcome. In its fourth week of release, the public and the critics reflect these sentiments.