Edition: U.S. / Global

´The Bridge´: There´s No Stoppin´ Mom´s Cheatin´ Heart

Published: October 27, 2000

Nobody does adultery in the movies more knowingly than the French. And although "The Bridge" doesn't contribute anything new to the literature on the subject, it glides down a well-trodden path with hardly a misstep until the very end, when it suddenly bumps into a wall. The film's message is as unsettling as it is familiar: adulterous passion, once aroused, follows its own laws, cannot be reasoned with and often can't be stopped. That's just the way of the flesh.

What's faintly offbeat about "The Bridge" is its sexual role reversal. The cheater who falls in love with a stranger encountered in a movie theater and considers chucking the family and running off happens to be the wife. When we first meet Mina (Carole Bouquet), whose unemployed older husband, Georges (Gérard Depardieu), recently lost his small masonry business, she is leaving a theater showing "Jules and Jim." The story is set in Normandy in the early 1960's, and the film's brisk pace and matter-of-fact attitude distantly echo the rhythms and attitudes of French New Wave movies from the period.

Mina and Georges, who live with their moody 15-year-old son, Tommy, in a simple cottage, are facing financial difficulties. Against her husband's wishes, Mina finds part-time work as a housekeeper in the home of well-to-do friends who live within biking distance. Georges reluctantly takes a menial job at a bridge-building site, which requires him to live in a dormitory on weekdays and commute home on weekends.

But even before Georges leaves, Mina has met Matthias (Charles Berling), a smoldering-eyed stranger who ogles her at a screening of "West Side Story" she is attending with Tommy. Afterward, they strike up a conversation, and Matthias takes the pair to a nightclub, where the romantic spark ignites while Tommy gets drunk. In the film's most original plot turn, Tommy (Stanislas Crevillen), who observes his mother falling in love and realizes exactly what's happening, becomes an increasingly resentful conspirator in her quickly developing affair.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that Matthias is a frequent guest in the house where Mina works. He also turns out to be the civil engineer at Georges's bridge-building site, and eventually the two men meet.

"The Bridge," directed by Mr. Depardieu and Frédéric Auburtin, is the kind of movie whose credibility relies entirely on its psychological realism, its eye for social detail and the well-roundedness of its characters. And to its credit, the three main characters are too likable for any of them to be saddled with blame. The screenplay hints that Mina probably wouldn't have married Georges 15 years earlier had she not become pregnant. The dashing, wealthy and mysterious Matthias is the knight in shining armor she has unconsciously been waiting for all these years.

From the moment they meet, it's clear that there's no contest. Mr. Depardieu, in one of his roughneck- with-a-heart-of-gold roles, emphasizes Georges's gentleness where another actor would play up the melodrama and his latent violence. As helpless and pathetic as he becomes, Mr. Depardieu's Georges still maintains a few shreds of dignity.

Although Ms. Bouquet's Mina is a woman on a precipice, the actress drastically underplays any high drama in a performance that is light, but far from offhanded. Girlish one minute, care-worn the next, teetering between passion and loyalty, she makes the experience of being swept away almost radically unglamorous.

Unfortunately, "The Bridge," which opens today at the Paris Fine Arts, doesn't know how to end. At a certain point, it rushes forward; then almost before you can catch your breath, it simply stops.


Directed by Gérard Depardieu and Frédéric Auburtin; in French, with English subtitles; written by François Dupeyron, based on a story by Alain Leblanc; director of photography, Pascal Ridao; music by Mr. Auburtin; produced by Jacques Bar and Cité Films Productions; released by Phaedra Cinema . At the Loews Paris Fine Arts Theater, 4 West 58th Street, Manhattan. Running time: 92 minutes. This film is not rated.

WITH: Gérard Depardieu (Georges), Carole Bouquet (Mina), Charles Berling (Matthias) and Stanislas Crevillen (Tommy).