The Girl On The Bridge

French everyman Daniel Auteuil and baby doll pop singer Vanessa Paradis star in Patrice Leconte's rhapsodic fairy tale of a knife thrower and his waiflike muse, a little girl lost who he saves from suicide and puts into his act. With her sparkling eyes and curled lips, Paradis looks like she's walked out of a fashion layout, but behind her facade is the naïve innocence of a child-woman who confuses sex and love, while Auteil's hangdog face suggests the scarred survivor of a loveless existence who wears disappointment like a badge of honor. Leconte drives the film into pure romantic fantasy: alone, they're hopeless losers; together, they are pure magic. In the film's most gloriously absurd moment, the two sneak off to an abandoned shack and play out their act in private: knife-throwing not simply as foreplay but sex itself, and she purrs and sighs and writhes in orgasmic gasps with each toss. Shot in shimmering black-and-white CinemaScope, it's gloriously baroque, and at times rhapsodically silly, and Leconte overcomes the paper doll characterizations and older man/younger woman dynamic with sheer passion and cinematic verve. He believes in his sequin and sawdust fantasy with such unabashed enthusiasm that he makes it work even through its most absurd moments. The DVD debut of this 1999 romance is part of the second wave of Paramount releases licensed by Legend Films. Other titles in this collection are included below.