Quite cleverly, Patrice Leconte, cinema's most celebrated misogynist, has managed to make a film that is supposed to be about one thing (the girl on the bridge) and is really about another (male, middle-aged self-pity; fans of AMERICAN BEAUTY are recommended this movie). The film opens with the heroine answering questions about her life, her dreams and hopes, her failures. It is not quite clearly why or to whom she's doing this - she speaks to an unseen female interviewer in a blackened room with a small, unfocused audience. Is she on trial? Being interrogated? On a television chatshow? The interviewer seems too benign for the first two, the questions too direct for the latter. The point is that she speaks in her own words, she can articulate her own crises, and, in making the objective interviewer disclose personal information, breaks down the barrier between subject and object, one of the film's main themes.
The peak of her power comes straight after this, as she takes the decision to commit suicide. After ten minutes all her power and individuality is used up, and she becomes the pawn of a mysteriously powerful middle-aged man, a mere projection of his fantasies. The film ceases to be about her trauma and becomes his. There are quite a lot of films like this.
Gabor takes Adele to be the target for his knife-throwing act. A man hurling knives at a passive woman is, of course, open to the most obvious suggestions, but throughout his career, Leconte has displayed a very strange attitude to sex. People who have a lot of it feel empty and disillusioned (LES BRONZES, LE PERFUM D'YVONNE); some men desire it, but, fatally, don't get it (MONSIEUR HIRE); mostly, they don't seem to desire it, and don't get it (LES SPECIALISTES). There is a weird puritan streak in this supposed sensualist. It is initially, crudely suggested that Gabor is gay, but the literalising of the knife-throwing as sexual sublimation in the railway shed (a very disturbing 'sex' scene, Adele writhing in orgasmic ecstasy, at one point literally lying down, pinned, awaiting the phallic attack), suggests that Gabor's problem is impotence, that his inability to ultimately control Adele rests in his inability to sexually claim her.
So, instead, he tries to stop anyone else having sex with her. He tames this promiscuous beast because, in a very bizarre morality, her sexual freedom has led to her despair. He tries to iron out her sexuality, her femininity, by making her look like a boy, and also a stature - the film is a kind of Pygmalion, about a knowledgeable man who takes an unformed girl and makes her a woman fit for society, except it's an anti-Pygmalion, because she knows quite enough about society and the world. He turns a worldly woman into a statue, into the world of (male) fairy tale and magic. Her attempt to break away from him, like Eliza Doolittle, leaves her adrift and betrayed and lost in the narrative - we never see her again except as a projection of his suicidal desires - his gambling, than, is just a figure for failure and misdirection.
You wouldn't mind this rather dubious subject matter if it was fuelled with the misanthropic glee of TANGO or the dreamy melancholy of THE HAIRDRESSER'S HUSBAND. But this is, if I may say so under IMDb guidelines, Leconte's least interesting film cinematically since LES BRONZES - most of the information is conveyed verbally. He tries to break this through a few desperate tilts, cranes and swoops, and a thumping score.
Because it is filmed in black and white, some undiscriminating critics who haven't seen many films have compared it to the nouvelle vague, but it is actually the complete opposite - phoney, contrived, absurdly over-composed; all danger, spontaneity, LIFE drained out of it. When we get to Italy, we get some cod-Felliniisms (the statue at the car raffle; the ship of fools), and there is a dubious attitude to foreigners in the Turkish section.
Ultimately we've here before, and the actors, the permenantly dour Daniel Auteuil, and the charming, inconsequential Vanessa Paradis, are rarely allowed to enliven a very slight story. The backstage of the circus is briefly engaging, and you have to watch this film for a wonderfully shocking, cruel, hilarious and (of course) misogynistic joke involving an abandoned bride and a badly timed loss of concentration.
The peak of her power comes straight after this, as she takes the decision to commit suicide. After ten minutes all her power and individuality is used up, and she becomes the pawn of a mysteriously powerful middle-aged man, a mere projection of his fantasies. The film ceases to be about her trauma and becomes his. There are quite a lot of films like this.
Gabor takes Adele to be the target for his knife-throwing act. A man hurling knives at a passive woman is, of course, open to the most obvious suggestions, but throughout his career, Leconte has displayed a very strange attitude to sex. People who have a lot of it feel empty and disillusioned (LES BRONZES, LE PERFUM D'YVONNE); some men desire it, but, fatally, don't get it (MONSIEUR HIRE); mostly, they don't seem to desire it, and don't get it (LES SPECIALISTES). There is a weird puritan streak in this supposed sensualist. It is initially, crudely suggested that Gabor is gay, but the literalising of the knife-throwing as sexual sublimation in the railway shed (a very disturbing 'sex' scene, Adele writhing in orgasmic ecstasy, at one point literally lying down, pinned, awaiting the phallic attack), suggests that Gabor's problem is impotence, that his inability to ultimately control Adele rests in his inability to sexually claim her.
So, instead, he tries to stop anyone else having sex with her. He tames this promiscuous beast because, in a very bizarre morality, her sexual freedom has led to her despair. He tries to iron out her sexuality, her femininity, by making her look like a boy, and also a stature - the film is a kind of Pygmalion, about a knowledgeable man who takes an unformed girl and makes her a woman fit for society, except it's an anti-Pygmalion, because she knows quite enough about society and the world. He turns a worldly woman into a statue, into the world of (male) fairy tale and magic. Her attempt to break away from him, like Eliza Doolittle, leaves her adrift and betrayed and lost in the narrative - we never see her again except as a projection of his suicidal desires - his gambling, than, is just a figure for failure and misdirection.
You wouldn't mind this rather dubious subject matter if it was fuelled with the misanthropic glee of TANGO or the dreamy melancholy of THE HAIRDRESSER'S HUSBAND. But this is, if I may say so under IMDb guidelines, Leconte's least interesting film cinematically since LES BRONZES - most of the information is conveyed verbally. He tries to break this through a few desperate tilts, cranes and swoops, and a thumping score.
Because it is filmed in black and white, some undiscriminating critics who haven't seen many films have compared it to the nouvelle vague, but it is actually the complete opposite - phoney, contrived, absurdly over-composed; all danger, spontaneity, LIFE drained out of it. When we get to Italy, we get some cod-Felliniisms (the statue at the car raffle; the ship of fools), and there is a dubious attitude to foreigners in the Turkish section.
Ultimately we've here before, and the actors, the permenantly dour Daniel Auteuil, and the charming, inconsequential Vanessa Paradis, are rarely allowed to enliven a very slight story. The backstage of the circus is briefly engaging, and you have to watch this film for a wonderfully shocking, cruel, hilarious and (of course) misogynistic joke involving an abandoned bride and a badly timed loss of concentration.