'The Lovers on the Bridge' doesn't play it safe
Juliette Binoche's 1991 romance has dizzying highs and agonizing lows
Leos Carax’s 1991 romance “The Lovers on the Bridge” is a film of dizzying highs and agonizing lows, absolutely none of which is captured by the milquetoast poster that Miramax used to advertise it in America.
Seriously, you have a film in which Juliette Binoche water-skis down the Seine behind a stolen police boat as fireworks erupt around her, and this is what you use to sell the movie?
I missed “Lovers” when it was released in 1991, perhaps confusing it for the other handsome foreign films that were fueling the U.S. arthouse boom of the 1990s. (“A Parisian love story starring Juliette Binoche? Naw, man, I’m going to see ‘Delicatessen!’”) But now that there’s a new 4K DCP print out from Janus Films that the UW Cinematheque is screening on Aug. 30, it’s a good time to catch up with it.
And wow, what a movie.
The movie starts with the lows. Alex (Carax favorite Denis Lavant) is a homeless street performer who is first seen staggering through the late-night streets of Paris in a near-catatonic state. He’s rescued by another person living on the streets, an artist named Michelle (Binoche) who is slowly losing her sight.
When the police van that rounds up the homeless to take them to a shelter comes to fetch them, it runs over his Alex’s foot. He doesn’t even notice. The scenes in the shelter have a grim and grimy authenticity to them that’s hard to shake.
But the next day, Alex takes Michele back to his home, which is the Bridge de Pont-Neug, the oldest bridge in Paris. The Pont-Neuf is closed for a year for repairs, littered with sandbags and construction equipment, and Alex and his benefactor Hans (Klaus-Michael Gruber) have made it their sanctuary.
According to Roger Ebert’s original review, Carax had permission from the Parisian government to film on the actual bridge. But production delays caused him to miss his window, so he ended up building a recreation of it elsewhere outside of Paris. It’s very convincing, and the bridge feels like a magical place that’s both part of the city and not part of it, suspended over the water.
Seemingly taking inspiration from both “City Lights” and “Beauty and the Beast,” “Lovers” follows Alex and Michele as they fall in love. There are quiet moments where Michele obsessively draws his portrait, using what remaining sight she has left, and loud moments, like that water-skiing scene. (The dance sequence that comes before it, in which Binoche and Lavant cavort across the bridge as fireworks explode behind them, feels like the sort of rapturous sequence that should be in every Oscar montage.)
Binoche fully throws herself into such a raw, unbridled performance in a way I’ve never seen her do before or since. And Lavant, as he was in Carax’s “Holy Motors,” is a magnetic physical performer, throwing his body around in ways that suggest not grace and poise but aggression and rebellion. When he’s doing backflips in a Paris Metro tunnel, he seems to be daring gravity itself to hold him back. (Gravity did respond, and Lavant reportedly broke his leg during the shoot.)
As “Lovers” careens recklessly across the screen, the nervy intensity of its lovers keeping us both fascinated and off-balance, we’re never sure whether this is going to end up being a tragic love story or a happy one. But it’s a wild cinematic ride that’s not to be missed, especially on the big screen.
“The Lovers on the Bridge” screens at 7 p.m. Saturday at the UW Cinematheque, 4070 Vilas Hall. The screening is free and open to the public, and seating is first-come first-serve. The full Fall 2025 schedule is here.