Carax finished off his “Alex” trilogy with a bang. His third film (and last with Denis Lavant until 2008) is “bigger” and more elaborate than anything else he’s ever done. In fact, I’d say his segment in ‘Tokyo’ is the only thing he’s done that’s come close to ‘Lovers on the bridge’ in terms of location, budget and all around “epicness”.
In ‘The Lovers On The Bridge’, Juliette Binoche plays; “Michel”, a homeless artist with a shady/mysterious past, who’s slowly going blind, that forms a relationship/bond with Denis Lavant, who plays the same Alex character from Carax’s previous 2 films. As the movie unfolds, Alex slowly starts to piece together Michele’s past. Alex is a lot more complex in this film than he is in the other 2. As he starts to uncover Michele’s past, he keeps information from her that could actually help her (even going so far as to take advantage of her bad eye sight) because he doesn’t want her to leave him. Michele’s family puts out missing person fliers all over Paris with her face on them, but because she can barely see, Alex tears them all down (in one scene he catches a city worker putting them up all over town, so he sets his truck on fire). Eventually Binoche learns that her family is looking for her and that there’s an operation that can save her sight. At that point their love for each other is put to the test. Binoche leaves and goes back to her family, while Alex goes to jail for setting fire to the truck (as well as the person inside it).
The best parts of this movie are all the scenes where Alex and Binoche are running around Paris like 2 children, essentially doing what they want. One scene shows the 2 lovers playing a “prank” on all of Paris, by slipping a heroin-like drug in to Innocent bystanders’ drinks when they aren’t looking, causing them to nod off. Naturally, there’s nothing funny about that, but at the same time, the way Carax directs & edits the scene actually does make it kinda funny. In another scene, we see the 2 lovers dancing through the streets (as fireworks appear in the background) and randomly firing gun shots in to the air. My only issue with ‘Lovers On The Bridge’ is how ugly Carax managed to make Binoche (the eye patch, the rotting teeth and the overall appearance of not taking a shower in a while).
And on a side note, what i also love about this film is the obvious influence it had on Jonathan Glazer’s music video for Unkle’s ‘Rabbit In Your Headlights’ (which is a song off of one of my all time favorite albums). Glazer even cast Denis Lavant in the music video. ‘The Lovers On The Bridge’ opens with Alex walking in the middle of a busy street, out of his mind, only to get his leg ran over by a car (and it actually doesn’t even seem to affect him). In Glazer’s music video, Denis Lavants wanders aimlessly through a busy highway, getting hit numerous times by passing cars only to get up like its nothing.
Its also quite interesting that Carax’s common theme in all of his movies (including his film; ‘Pola X’ which came years later) is “love”. I always found this kinda funny because if you’ve ever seen video of Leos Carax (who makes an appearance at the beginning and end of Harmony Korine’s ‘mister lonely’), he seems like a pretty gloomy and depressed guy. I would’ve never expected a film like ‘The Lovers On The Bridge’ to come from someone like him.