State of the Art

Bridge's troubled waters

by Peter Keough

French filmmaker Léos Carax would be the first to admit that a lot of water has passed under the bridge since he finished Les amants du Pont Neuf in 1991. It's the deceptively simple tale of two homeless people in love -- an alcoholic part-time firebreather who's slowly losing his mind, played by Denis Lavant, and a one-time artist who's slowly losing her sight, played by future Oscar winner (and Carax's then girlfriend) Juliette Binoche. But during production it went repeatedly over budget, extra expenses including the meticulous re-creation in the south of France of the title Parisian landmark where the lovers' grand passion literally explodes. Scathing reviews greeted its release in France, and it was never picked up for foreign distribution. After a debacle comparable to Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate, Carax, the upstart heir apparent to the New Wave with his first two films, Boy and Girl and Bad Blood, sank into seclusion and did not make another movie for eight years.

Both Les amants and Carax would get a second chance, however. Picked up by Miramax under the title The Lovers on the Bridge, the film has now been released in America, following the debut of Carax's newest effort, Pola X, this year at Cannes. "Lovers on the Bridge was so hard to make that everything broke after that," says Carax. "The producer died, people separated, and I stopped making films after that. I thought I would not make films anymore. But that happens with all my films. They take time. Now the film is shown every year on TV and is seen completely differently."

How does Carax see it?

"I had a dream where there was an image, I was living with the actress [Binoche] at the time, and we were on a shady parapet of a bridge. We were facing each other from opposite sides of the bridge, and we were walking toward each other at night. There were both beautiful and terrifying feelings. I didn't know if when we met we would kiss or fight and fall into the water. At the time where we were living, you could see the Pont Neuf from the window. I have always loved that bridge, the oldest bridge in Paris. It's very massive and at the same time beautiful. There is a feeling of security about it. I guess all of that kind of mixed together, and that's the idea of the film."

Despite the notorious budget overruns, Carax's intent in The Lovers on the Bridge was to pare down the subject of his previous two films -- romantic love -- to its essence.

"With each previous film I felt I hadn't gone far enough. I felt maybe I had been too protected by the camera. I wanted to make a film in the open air, to feel the flesh of the actors without make-up, without apartments and bedrooms and faxes and phones and all these things that protect people. I wanted to make a film about love that would be about naked love."

The Lovers on the Bridge is currently playing at the Coolidge Corner.