The Lovers on the Bridge

Director: Leos Carax Leos Carax

Overview

In this romantic French drama, two homeless people living on the Pont-Neuf Bridge in Paris struggle to survive and somehow manage to fall in love.

Product Details

Release Date:	03/14/2017
UPC:	0738329208639
Original Release:	1991
Rating:	R
Source:	Kino Classics
Region Code:	1
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Stereo]
Language:	English
Time:	2:07:00

Special Features

Water and Stone, a video essay by Cristina Álvarez López & Adrian Martin (courtesy of MUBI); Trailer

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Juliette Binoche	Michèle Stalens
Denis Lavant	Alex
Klaus-Michael Grüber	Actor
Daniel Buain	Actor
Marion Stalens	Actor
Chrichan Larsson	Actor
Edith Scob	Actor
Paulette Berthonnier	Actor,Actor
Georges Apperighis	Actor
Michel Vandestien	Actor
Georges Castorp	Actor
Marc Desclozeaux	Actor
Alain Dahan	Actor
Pierre Pessemesse	Actor
Maître Bitoun	Actor
Johnny Aldama	Actor
Jean-Louis Airola	Actor
Albert Prévost	Actor
Marc Maurette	Actor
Marie Trintignant	Actor

Technical Credits

Leos Carax

Leos Carax	Director,Screenwriter
Christian Fechner	Producer
Albert Prévost	Executive Producer
Hervé Truffaut	Executive Producer
Bernard Artigues	Producer
Murielle Damain	Sound Effects
Gérard Lamps	Sound Effects
Christian Monheim	Sound Effects
Henri Morelle	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

Straddling a fine line between greatness and folly, Les Amants du Pont-Neuf might be director Leos Carax's most infamous work. Carax's crackpot epic romance seemed doomed to a cursed existence from the beginning. Starring Denis Lavant and Juliette Binoche as two bums who fall in love, the movie received ecstatic notices upon its 1991 Cannes Film Festival premiere, only to meet with an indifferent box office. Perhaps Promethean hubris sealed its fate; the movie famously rebuilt Paris' Pont-Neuf and the banks of the Seine to fulfill Carax's grandiose vision. Three years in the making and three times over budget, Les Amants is the most extravagant expression of Carax's pet theme of l'amour fou. Unhindered by intellectual concerns, Les Amants is a purely instinctive act of filmmaking. Transfixed by the sublime (and skirting dangerously close to the ridiculous), the movie betrays a belief in cinema as a purely visceral medium. The apotheosis of Carax's heedless approach is a jaw-dropping Bastille Day set piece: the two lovers dance, scream, and cavort against a backdrop of fireworks and a cacophony of rap, classical, and dance music. It's a defining moment in Carax's canon, and, some might argue, a high that the movie never fully recovers from. For all its flaws, this unabashedly whimsical movie sustains, if unevenly, its exuberant vision. Reckless, excessive, and seized of millennial delirium, Carax's valentine to Paris may be remembered as one of the epochal movies of 1990s world cinema.