Un pont entre deux rives

Carole Bouquet is a revelation as a woman approaching middle age (a long way from her Bond girl origins), and Charles Berling and Gerard Depardieu are in their usual top form. But the screenplay, adapted from a French best seller, but with a radically changed ending, is not the French BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY as some claimed. The screenplay tells an all too familiar story that even its excellent actors and technical team cannot overcome. In its fourth week of release, the public and the critics reflect these sentiments.

Hmm,....I've seen a lot of French films in the last year and have found that quite a few of them concern adultery. So, I found myself a bit tired of the plot line already before I even began watching this film.

Carole Bouquet is a middle-aged woman married to Gerard Depardieu. She's an awfully pretty lady who's a housewife and he's a very traditional working man. Unknown to him, she wants more out of life. She never tells him anything so he assumes the marriage is fine. Well, he's out of work and needs a job so he has to work several hours away and only come home on the weekends. Since she is bored, she doesn't try very hard not to become involved with another married man. During all this, she does a lousy job of concealing it from her teenage son--eventually this selfish and carefree approach towards her son will result in consequences (the best part of the film I think because it actually shows the damage this behavior can have on the kids). Depardieu finds out but doesn't respond like a clod--in fact, he's very quick to forgive her and take her back. His character is just too decent about it. He also vows that if she's bored, he'll do anything to change things. But, she's extremely self-centered and runs off with her lover.

I actually liked the film better than most of the French "adultery movies" because you can see negative consequences. I think for those who think adultery is an evil, there's enough there to prevent the movie from glorifying it. And, interestingly enough, I could also see the movie being taken as a "do it if it makes you feel good" film by those who think adultery is a legitimate alternative. It's interesting, though, how often in films the message appears to be that it is your partner's job to make you happy--and isn't YOUR responsibility to make yourself happy. That's just my "two cents worth". I would have liked it if the film had focused more on this, but this is only a minor quibble.

Well-acted and interesting, but not a great film.

I really enjoyed this movie when I saw it recently on the Sundance Channel. I really dislike about 95% of the films provided by Hollywood and I wish we could have more films like this.

I have always liked Depardieu films and this is just one more example of why I like him as an actor. It is just a character study of how several people try to get through life. In fact, it is probably how most of us get through life and you rarely see it portrayed in films from Hollywood.

I know that most people that I know would not like a film like this, but I am sure thankful that I get to see them.

Despite the wonderfully wrenching performance of the boy (Stanislas Crevillen) this Bridge lacks foundation to support the relationship that turns on a tear. Motive matters. And a thoughtless and irresponsible and unsympathetic role Bouquet is saddled with, besides a 16th arrondissement visage in a maid's role, does not allow the viewer to ultimately care, though the sympathies do lie with the boy and the dad. This tranche de la vie is a bit stale, n'est-ce pas?

"The Bridge" is a slice-of-French-life flick which, like many French films, is fatalistic, character-driven, and an almost plotless film about life. The film tells of a middle class housewife and mother who has an affair. The adulterous relationship is treated cooly by the husband (Depardieu), the wife (Boquet), and her lover (Berling) in this film in which, beyond the principals, everything else is just so much window dressing. Well acted, not particularly artistic but technically okay, "The Bridge" will appeal most to aficionados of French cinema while other will miss the sex, nudity, melodrama, and other appurtenances of a typical Hollywood product.