I hope that you’ll excuse my enthusiasm. It is quite rare to fall on a film that I consider it deserving a 10/10 rating on IMDB. I am a demanding cinema fan, and the maximum rating is reserved on my scale to films that are exciting, innovative, remarkable (not necessarily impeccable) from an artistic point of view and whose viewing have captivated or moved me or both. It is the case of ‘Les amants du Pont-Neuf‘, the superb film directed by Leos Carax released in 1991.
The film can be described as a love story in the world of the homeless Parisians. I happen to know well the place most of the action takes place, the Pont-Neuf bridge, located in the center of Paris, near one of the hotels where I chose to stay when in the City of Lights. The filming of ‘Les amants du Pont-Neuf‘ has its own story. Carax used for part of the time for shooting the real bridge which was under renovation in 1989, the year when France celebrated the 200th anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. The two heroes are an alcoholic tramp (Denis Lavant, Carax‘s favorite actor) and a young painter touched by a disease that gradually destroys her eyesight (Juliette Binoche), running away to escape desperation because of her illness and an unfortunate love story. The two do not know too well to communicate, it starts with a drop of compassion that develops in a relationship. To survive they steal in different ways when they are not drunk or consuming other substances. Still, nothing stands in the way of the love story between them, neither their personal misfortunes, nor the misery of the homeless life they are forced or maybe they choose to live, not the police raids or the antipathy of an older homeless who declares himself the ‘owner’ of the bridge under repairs. It is only when things could begin to straighten out that their love story will be in jeopardy. There are many extreme situations and bizarre or out-of-norm solutions, but nothing to bother either the heroes or the viewers, as the love story is compelling and captivates the attention and emotions of the audience. Love and beauty can blossom anywhere, including in garbage and in evil environments, we know it since Baudelaire.
Carax‘s cinematic style in this film (and in a few more of his films) belongs to a trend called ‘Cinema du look’, popular in the ’80s, which can be described as a post-Nouvelle Vague reaction. The characters are chosen with predilection from the outskirts of society, they are vagabonds, prostitutes, walking failures or criminals, while the films are shot in the aesthetic style reserved for films describing the more fortunate social classes (Claude Lelouch‘s films for example). The results are spectacular in this film, in which the exuberance of the official celebrations resonates with the lovers’ emotions, where the Paris of garbage and poverty seems to harmonize with the tourist’s Paris. Denis Lavant and Juliette Binoche create two of the best roles of their careers, they are sincere, vulnerable, and authentic as the two lovers hit by the misfortunes of life, who find mutual support in each other avoiding the fall in abyss. I strongly recommend this movie, I personally loved it enormously. You will get as a bonus a scene that I believe inspired James Cameron in Titanic. I’m not saying more, because I hope that you will look for this movie and see it, if you have not done it yet.