Watching "Les Amants Du Pont-Neuf" I kept telling myself that only the French could have made it and that the ghosts of Prevert and Carne and especially Vigo were hovering above that famous bridge. Alex and Michele are as much the children of paradise as were Garance or Baptiste. They are tramps living on the streets of Paris or more precisely on the now derelict Pont-Neuf bridge, (it's being renovated), and to someone who isn't French their love affair is very Gallic. No ordinary tramps, he is a fire-eating acrobat and she is a painter who is going blind and since they are played by the remarkable Denis Lavant and Juliette Binoche you know their story will be as grand as it may be tragic.
This was only Leos Carax's third film but it confirmed him as one of the best directors working in movies and not just in France. It's a visually bold, near epic picture and at the time of its release was not considered a success; it was thought of as old-fashioned. Now, of course, it's thought of as the masterpiece it clearly is but while it confirmed Carax's artistry it could just as easily have ended his career. It was eight years until his next feature and since then he's only made one other film by himself, the brilliant "Holy Motors", (he is credited as one of the three directors of "Tokyo").It hardly matters, of course, that "Les Amants Du Pont-Neuf" is fanciful and unrealistic, a paean of praise to cinema and not to life, (this is really "L'Atalante" in just another guise), but then isn't that why we go to the cinema in the first place? Let us hope it's not too long before Carax is enchanting us once again with his magic. We, and the cinema, need him.
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