The_late_Buddy_Ryan Seems like the streaming format can't do justice to this cult film's visual pyrotechnics (literally, in the case of the famous Bastille Day fireworks/waterskiing sequence(!)), but what really tipped the balance for us was the operatic silliness of the plot. At first it seems like Carax is trying for the kind of bittersweet fantasy about the Parisian underclass that Jean Renoir and René Clair were turning out in the 30s—updated with a "gritty" layer of realism that can be difficult to watch. We didn't much care for the way the script exploits pathology—blindness, depression, dissociation, addiction, pathological jealousy and all-around destructive craziness—as a substitute for character and emotion, which comes across as cynical and pretentious. The over-the-top plot contrivances may make for some effective individual scenes—Michèle fantasizes about hunting down an ex-lover and shooting him, Alex destroys all the "have you seen this girl?" posters that Michèle's parents have put up, Michèle and Alex pose like figureheads on the prow of a barge on the Seine (remind you of anything?)—but none of it seems to add up to much in the end. There's another scene where middle-aged tourists are roofied and robbed by the lovers at an outdoor café; we see them waking up, feeling dazed and abused no doubt. We identified.

geoff-345 This "romantic" film was just so depressing and so unrealistic - it made it impossible for me to feel any sympathy or empathy for the 2 main characters and their desperate and desolate lives. I kept watching in the vain hope I'd find some redeeming feature but failed miserably. One has to have a touch of masochism to sit through this 2 hour endurance course! I came away with nothing that enriched my heart or mind in any way. It was just depressing watching these characters on their self-destructive binge! How love could sprout or thrive under such conditions and with such false motives is beyond me. One could only watch it in a detached way as it was just impossible to understand or identify with the main characters. Avoid it like the plague!

MisterWhiplash There are moments and scenes in Lovers on the Bridge that waver between being straightforward in their realism and the given grittiness of living life on the streets homeless and of those sudden romantic bursts that are also a given if you're French and wanting to show how wonderful and horrible it can be in a strange situation. There are many I could point to, but there's also a suddenness to the work, moments that pop out and make the viewer put into perspective the tragic nature of this story and the characters. There's an unpredictability, but not without logic or something in line with life in this situation and place.One such moment that few reviewers may talk about involves the character of Hans and his death. Throughout the film he's been more than wary of the presence of half-blind Michelle (Binoche) who has also fallen in (possible) love with Alex (Lavant) the drunken/druggie fire-breather, and for a while we as the audience see him as a rather ugly being. But then he opens up to Michelle- how he came to be on this bridge without a job, or without his wife and the death of his child- and he offers her to take her to a museum, which he has a key for from his job as a guard, to see a painting as close to the surface as possible late at night. He's actually quite a touching character gradually, still grumpy and grisly but with a conscience and feeling for Michelle's plight... Then as he walks down a set of stairs and comes to the side of the riverbank he slips and falls and dies.In any other hands this could become high melodrama, a director pulling out all the stops to make this a really significant event for these character Michelle and Alex. But just as soon as he was there, he's gone, and I was overwhelmed for a moment by pure anguish at this man's demise. There's other moments like that as well in Carax's film, where he substitutes stark poetry- or something truly alive and fast and ebullient poetry with his camera and wonderful, expensive set (some of the time)- and balances so satisfyingly between the grime and clutter of this little enclave on the bridge and the torrid love between two people who are together for various reasons, some known well and some intimated by just the slightest moves (or lack thereof). With some minor exceptions like the very end, which leads to some curious and surreal ambiguity, it's a sensational ride.We're taken along on the story of Alex, a fire-breather as his only trade and with hobbies of booze and drugs in order to sleep, and Michelle, a painter who has nowhere to go except to old lovers she'd rather not see, or can't see because of flailing eyesight (or, if she does, bad things happen- or appear to happen, again the ambiguity). They become very close, maybe too close for the extremely lonely and possibly brain damaged Alex, and pull off a money making scheme, which ends with a moment of a selfish act, as well as have nights of debauchery and excitement. The most notable of the latter, probably of the best kinds of exuberant, crazy type scenes in any motion picture, is when Alex and Michelle, smashed to hell, run and jump and dance to a giant fireworks display, with Carax pumping up Iggy Pop and Blue Danube Waltz music, and finishing off with a water-skiing down the river. This is one of those sequences I probably will never forget, not just for the power of the film-making but for the feeling one has for the characters at that moment of time in the movie: sublime, momentary escapism.Things end up getting very dark for the characters, not least of which for Alex who goes on a rampage tearing down posters looking for Michelle for an eye-operation (this is one of those scenes that goes between reality and fantasy that's jarring: it verges on pretension, but I actually didn't mind it for how wrapped up one becomes in the plight of Alex with "his" Michelle), and the ending finds the two years later, changed only on the surface. All the old wounds are there, and how they'll exactly end up is difficult to say. But what is clear for Carax, after going through a story that features real homeless people in shelters (this footage shot like a documentary, plunging us so far into this world we forget most of the time the bridge is a set), of numerous fights and cries and hugs and laughs and fights between the two would-be/may-be lovebirds, that what would be cynical in any other hands is treated as bittersweet humanism. Carax cares for these characters deeply, even the troubled Alex, and it's important to understand that in their downfall. A+

dusan711 Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (aka The Lovers on the Bridge) is such a unique film, really I can't find anything to compare it to in terms of story or style. Juliette Binoche is one of the great screen actors of all time, and here she is very captivating and with very little dialogue. Denis Lavant is equally good in a very challenging role. Leos Carax gets a double thumbs up for sticking with this project and his unique vision over the extremely long production schedule.With more moments of silence than sound, it is amazing that the film manages to engage so thoroughly. I've seen it twice and both times I was surprised at how hard it was for me to look away. The cinematography has something to do with that of course.Some moments are so calm and tender...and others are very jolting and violent. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there really is something extraordinary in The Lovers on the Bridge.