A LOVE STORY
One chilly night, on a Paris bridge, a girl leans
out over the Seine with tears in her eyes, contemplating the icy
waters below. Suddenly, a stranger with a penetrating gaze emerges
out of the darkness, a man who will change her life. It is Gabor,
a once brilliant but now fading performer in need of a partner.
He has set his sights on this luckless but oddly alluring girl,
AdÈle, a girl with nowhere to go who is shifting nervously
on the edge of a decision. In his 18th film, an erotic fairy tale
about luck and love, director Patrice Leconte again astonishes.
Girl On the Bridge is part romantic comedy, part road movie that
moves along with the exuberance and suspense of an action thriller.
A hypnotic modern fairy tale told against a romantic and oddball
whirlwind tour of Europe, the film received a Golden Globe nomination
for Best Foreign Film as well as eight Cesar Award nominations
(including Best French Film, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director,
Best Cinematography and Best Writing).
Daniel Auteuil earned the Cesar for Best Actor for the film. Gabor
(BAFTA and Cesar winner Daniel Auteuil) is a circus performer
with unusual telepathic talents. Now half of a knife-throwing
act, he needs a willing target who, preferably, does not care
too much about life as it is dangerous work. He finds all that
he is searching for-and more-in Adele (Cesar winner Vanessa Paradis),
the dispirited young girl he recruits after their chance encounter
on the bridge. Quickly transformed from a wounded doe into a glamorous
Cinderella, Adele is whisked away to Monaco by her new svengali.
Though sternfaced Gabor is falling hard for his lovely Pygmalion,
he never touches her?
A situation that generates ample sexual tension between them as
their knife-throwing routines gain a thrilling urgency and sensuality.
Plunged into a strange, telepathic symbiosis, they perform to
audiences from Paris to the Peloponnese leaving them mesmorized.
But like a dollar bill that has been torn in half, Gabor presents
Adele with half a dollar bill they then discover that each of
them is worthless without the other.
Ultimately, these two halves of a whole must rely on their mystical
connection to overcome the circumstances that conspire to keep
them apart. Taking us from sumptuous Mediterranean locales to
an exotic, Fellini-esque carnival sideshow, Girl on the Bridge
is a charming, chaotic, unforgettable ride through the tunnel
of love. Paramount Classics presents Girl on the Bridge, directed
by Patrice Leconte. Screenplay by Serge Frydman. Produced by Christian
Fechner. Executive producer and HervÈ Truffaut. Jean-Marie
Dreujou is director of photography, JoÎlle Hache is editor
and Yvan Moussion is production designer. Costumes by Annie PÈrier.
