The Lovers on the Bridge (1991, Leos Carax) (Patreon)

77/100

Third viewing, last seen 1999 (though several months prior to its belated U.S. theatrical release that year—must've been an early press screening). Still can't quite believe that this movie exists, even after reading more extensively about how Carax recreated the Pont-Neuf and its environs elsewhere. It's impossible not to gape, awestruck, at the Bicentennial sequence, arguably the greatest coup de cinéma from a director who specializes in them; there's something heart-stoppingly magical about reducing the world to two isolated people (plus one observer) and then visually amplifying their emotions such that they set the night sky ablaze. "Intimate epic" is a quasi-oxymoron that I've used more than once (w/r/t films as different as Breaking the Waves and Brakhage's 23rd Psalm Branch), but this genuinely is a tiny, no-budget portrait of toxic codependence that somehow became what was then the most expensive French film ever made. And despite having no special effects to speak of, it looks utterly improbable, simply by virtue of being set where it is. I expended way too much mental energy trying to determine what was actually shot on the Pont-Neuf and what was shot in Lansargues (with most Parisian buildings represented by scaffolding), eventually admitting defeat. Turns out you can accomplish miracles if you're determined and the dude who's funding you loses his mind. 

Beyond the sheer spectacle, I'm always drawn to characters who behave selfishly and even destructively toward people they ostensibly love because they're terrified of losing them. Some folks have criticized this film for romanticizing homelessness, which I guess is understandable given the fireworks and the water-skiing and whatnot. Les Amants (as I still think of it, even though I use the bland English-language title in my logs) isn't oblivious to the sociopolitical reality, though—that's why Hans meets such a horribly sad yet barely acknowledged (except by the camera) fate. Carax simply chooses to make Alex and Michèle complex, richly imagined individuals, as opposed to mere symbols of society's indifference. It's not even clear whether we're meant to celebrate the happy-ish ending, given that Alex never really stops treating Michèle like a prize possession to which he's entitled by the rule of finders keepers. In fact, my one significant reservation involves the post-prison epilogue, which basically just repeats the body of the film in ultra-condensed form. I'd feel more sanguine about this were it clearly intended as what Christopher Durang once termed a "dot dot dot ending" (i.e. nobody changes and their aberrant behavior will continue unto eternity), but the mood of that final shot is a tad too triumphal for me to feel confident that Carax wants us to be uneasy. And so, in conclusion, The Lovers on the Bridge is a land of contradictions. Thank you. [Obligatory lackluster applause;spitball whizzes past ear.]