Girl on the Bridge

REVIEW
A tale of desperation, director Leconte’s Girl on the Bridge stars Paradis as Adele, a young woman heartbreakingly unconvinced of her worth and eerily convinced of her tragic doom. Enter Gabor (Auteuil), who finds Adele -- on the verge of suicide -- and nimbly recruits her into his knife-throwing act. Moments of sly, paternal seduction into a world of dangerous self-destruction are far from rare in great cinema (this is strangely reminiscent of Burt Reynolds and Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights), but Adele’s acquiescence is portrayed with such raw tenderness that it sets the tone for the rest of the film. The subsequent relationship between these two lost souls is necessarily fraught with sexual innuendo (man risks puncturing woman with knives that he throws; woman takes pleasure in this!) and a poignant relativism embodied by the paradox that without the prospect of imminent death, Adele’s life seems scarcely worth living. Yet for all of its pathos and, at times, melodramatic self-pity, Girl on the Bridge remains a vivid, intelligent film. (French with English subtitles)