Being basically the story of a romance among tramps, this sentimental and drawn-out melodrama is filled with repellent detail (these characters certainly don't emanate from the world of Chaplin or Rene' Clair!) but is held firmly enough together by good performances by the three main actors (particularly Juliette Binoche, who is quite moving as the sketch artist slowly going blind) and the odd moment of inspiration: the lovers walking on the ledge of the bridge against the backdrop of a fireworks display; their putting to sleep the clientele of a café by means of the narcotic previously used by the insomniac boy; the elderly tramp a sort of father-figure to the boy but who also has an inexplicable aversion to the girl reminiscing about his manic-depressive wife and the former job he had as the watchman of various cultural sites; the lovers running naked by the sea silhouetted against the horizon (and with the boy's erect penis receiving undue attention!); the boy setting on fire a bunch of posters of the missing girl fixed on the walls of an underground station.
Review of The Lovers on the Bridge
