Les Amants du Pont-Neuf

This review has an Alternate Ending – check it out here.

Dublin’s Irish Film Institute (my beloved IFI) recently hosted a screening of Les Amants du Pont-Neuf. The film is from 1991, directed by Leos Carax, and stars Juliette Binoche and Denis Lavant, with Klaus Michael-Gruber in a supporting role. IFI screened it as part of its ‘The Bigger Picture’ initiative, and projectionist Paul Markey gave a short introduction to the film which was a formative early viewing experience for him. Markey’s introduction outlined the very lengthy (years!) shoot, the ongoing difficulties, the eventual refusal of further planning permission to shoot on the famous bridge, the subsequent decision to build a HUGE set in the French countryside to recreate the Parisian setting… and the critics’ ultimately negative judgement on the film.

We went along, having seen the trailer, which promised explosive acting performances and an intriguing story. There is, embedded within the trailer and indeed the film, the germ of a subversive romantic comedy. But the film is clearly not so straightforward, the performances are stunning but the film itself is nerve-wracking, intense, and deeply unsettling.

The plot follows two people living homeless in Paris, taking up positions on the Pont-Neuf while it is under construction and closed for access. Lavant is Alex, a drug user and acrobat who has been living rough for long enough to have settled into its jerky rhythm. Binoche is Michele, an artist with failing eyesight who appears on the bridge one day. Michele disrupts the routines of Alex and Hans, an older man who lives on the bridge and exercises control over its comings and goings. All three give wonderful performances. Alex is threatening and volatile, pitiful but dangerous. He is constantly in motion. Michele meanwhile is still. She is an ingenue to bridge life and homelessness, and her reasons for being on the bridge are a central driver in the plot. Hans is a hulking father figure to both, who spins a yarn of his tragic back story, and inevitably fails utterly to live up to our hopes.

There are spectacular sequences, particularly the fireworks over the Seine, and the balletic bursts of dance from Lavant and Binoche, all set to booming classical music – which is pure joy to watch (a week after we saw 2001: A Space Odyssey on 70mm in the IFI which used the same piece of music to very different effect).

Beyond this sequence. There is little else of pure joy about this film. The tension builds throughout. Michele is warned by Hans that this life is for him and Alex, but not for her. Homelessness is not for women, who face sexual exploitation and violence. Hans is right. Everyone who offers Michele anything is out for something.

We left the cinema reeling. The New York Times may have found aspects of it hard to stomach, but it was the central relationship that did it for us.