This film was screened at the 2000 Seattle International Film Festival.

THE GIRL ON THE BRIDGE

reviewed by Mattro

This is a lovely b&w film from France starring Vanessa Paradis as Adele (a down on her luck street urchin who uses sex as a survival mechanism) and Daniel Auteuil as Gabor (an aging professional knife thrower). They meet on a bridge where they are each about to commit suicide. Gabor instantly sees something in Adele and recruits her as the target in his knife throwing shows. Together they have amazingly good luck both on stage and in the casinos where their traveling knife shows take place. Despite Adele's wandering amour, the bond between her and Gabor grows stronger and stronger. It is like sex for them when Gabor is standing 20 feet away hurling knives at the wall Adele is standing against. The chemistry between Paradis and Auteuil is intense. Both actors hand in excellent performances.

Adele's starry-eyed search for the perfect warm embrace gets the best of her though, and she ships out (literally) with a Greek guy after spending a single night with him. Gabor is distraught and can no longer throw knives straight leaving him no choice but to sell his knives for food in Istanbul. Adele's new beau is picking up on other ladies soon after the two of them reach Athens. Needless to say, Adele and Gabor are two halves of a perfect lucky whole when they are together but each succumb to their bad luck while apart.

The Girl on the Bridge starts strong and maintains an engaging dreamlike quality all the way through the film up until the last 6 or 7 minutes. It is here the creators break the spell by throwing away an otherwise magical love story. The last minute reunification of Adele and Gabor was so contrived that I almost booed out loud in the theater. But if you can forgive the lame ending, the rest of the film is a real treat.

Gabor is in Turkey, broke and alone. Adele is in Greece jilted, lonely and also struggling. I love the way they seem to communicate across the distances telepathically, I have no problem with that particular artistic liberty. I was unhappy with the filmmaker's choice of having Adele magically show up at the very bridge in Istanbul where Gabor is about to end it all with no hint or explanation as to how she got there. I found it too Disney-esque. Throughout the film we see how she gets to Monte Carlo, how she gets to Athens, etc. But there is no hint of how she gets from Athens to Istanbul... nor is there an indication of significant time passed for her to make that journey. She magically appears in an overpopulated city at the right place and the right time and the audience is supposed to chalk it up to the 'power of love' or something. Yes, I know this IS a love story, and I TOTALLY enjoyed the other 95% of this film, but the end did NOT work for me at all. It was far too contrived.