The Girl on the Bridge (15)

Phoenix Picture House, 16th - 29th June 2000

Through the questioning of unseen, unexplained interviewers we are introduced to beautiful hapless Adele: naive, easy-going and somewhat melancholy, she recounts her many casual sexual encounters. But there is an air of confidence about her which lets her banter with mighty wit when, later, her attempt at suicide by falling from a bridge is intercepted by the knife-thrower Gabor. He offers her an alternative: to be his target in an increasingly dangerous act, as they wow their way around the Mediterranean.

The charge created when these two first meet builds rapidly, wrapping them and all they touch in enchanted fortune as Adele grows in assurance and Gabor grows in talent. They move effortlessly, winning every game they play, from the roulette wheel to the Wheel of Death. And accordingly, when they separate, the spell weakens and the film cracks, urging them to a necessary reunion.

Adele is played by a very grown-up Vanessa Paradis; Gabor by haggard, magnetic Daniel Auteuil. The dialogue is sharp and piquant, as would be expected from Patrice Leconte, the director of Ridicule. The film is shot in glamorous black and white, beams of light defining the figures in the way that in architecture, spaces shape a building. It is hard to do justice to this beautiful French film with the reviewer's usual stock-in-trade prosaic descriptions and clichés: "romantic comedy", yes; "a girl on a bridge"; yes. But really it is so much more than that: it is funny, emotive, and remarkable. Perhaps only in its own language can its atmosphere be conveyed truly, where reviewers can talk of "un hymne poetique sur l'amour et la chance".

Lina Christopoulou, 22 / 6 / 00