Un pont entre deux rives (1999) - film review

1962.  Although Mina and Georges are happily married, with a teenage son, times are hard.  With her husband out of work, Mina is forced to accept a job as a housemaid.  Georges then finds work, on a bridge construction project, but this requires him to live away from his home.  With her husband out of the picture, Mina starts an affair with an engineer, Matthias, who is also involved with the bridge project.  Whilst she can’t bear to hurt her husband, or her son, Mina is incapable of giving up her new love, and she is ultimately faced with an impossible decision…

Gérard Depardieu both co-directed and starred in this film, a conventional romantic drama involving a love triangle, the kind of film that fits most people’s stereotypical view of French cinema.  Depardieu previously directed a fine screen adaptation of Molière’s play, Le Tartuffe (1984), although he is far better known for his work as an actor – one of France’s most prolific and instantly recognisable.  Here, he stars along side his real-life partner, Carole Bouquet, and another highly regarded actor, Charles Berling – most people’s idea of the perfect ménage-à-trois.

Whilst the film offers few surprises and adheres to a very familiar formula, sensitive performances from the three lead actors makes it far more appealing than it would otherwise have been.  The period setting (the early 1960s) works to the film’s advantage, allowing two teenagers’ first experiences of love to be compared, rather touchingly, with the extra-marital affair involving a middle aged couple – the teenagers come out more favourably, even if they are probably destined to repeat the errors of their parents at some point in the future.  The spontaneity and obsessive power of love is conveyed well, but the lack of passion and emotional force is all too apparent, particularly in the film’s downbeat and somewhat dry ending.

© James Travers 2005

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