Les amants du Pont-Neuf

The Lovers on the Bridge is a very French film, for one can almost only imagine a Frenchman taking on a story about such strange and marginalised existences as those we meet in the film. Juliette Binoche casts off all glamour in the role of the upper-class girl Michelle, who has become homeless entirely of her own free will. Is it due to unhappy love or to the eye disease that is gradually robbing her of her sight, or perhaps both together? Michelle settles on the Pont-Neuf, which is under renovation. There the older homeless man Hans rules the roost, and he is extremely unfriendly towards strangers, but Michelle nevertheless wangles herself a place to sleep. Only one other homeless person makes his home on the bridge. That is Alex, who falls violently in love with Michelle, so violently that he will do anything, simply anything, to win her love and, once he has it, to keep it. That is why Alex commits murder. Against all odds, Michelle and Alex find each other again after she has returned to an ordinary existence and he has served his sentence.

Leos Carax creates handsome images of the Pont-Neuf, but the images do not prevent the film from becoming rather tedious in the long run. Carax is either not good enough to convey, or does not wish to convey, what drives these young people, what goes on in their heads.