| In Un Pont Entre Deux Rives (A Bridge Between Two Shores), George (played by Gérard Depardieu) was once a small-scale entrepreneur in a town of Normandy, operating a masonry business with three employees, but his business went bankrupt. He therefore spends hours gambling at a tavern while his wife Mina (played by Carole Bouquet) goes to the movies as an emotional outlet. When the richest woman in the town, Claire (played by Dominique Reymond), asks Mina to serve as a housemaid at her palatial inn, she is eager to accept a new source of income, even though George makes a show of disapproval. George eventually finds work at Tancarville as a foreman for a three-year project to build a bridge across the Seine near Le Havre, but the commute home is too expensive for him due to the high price of gasoline in France, so he dorms in company housing until the weekends. Matthias (played by Charles Berling), one of the engineers at the construction site, rents a room in Claire’s inn, as his wife prefers to live in their home in Nice, as he can afford the commute by car. Matthias meets Mina at the cinema one day and have a drink and a dance afterward, accompanied by fifteen-year-old Tommy (played by Stanislas Crévillen), her adorable son. As Matthias and Mina pursue an affair, Tommy and Lisbeth (played by Melanie Laurent), the rebellious daughter of Claire, get better acquainted. In due course, rotund George realizes that his wife is having an affair with the engineer. Although he considers selling the house so that the family can move near to the construction site, and he ultimately realizes with little emotion that he cannot compete with a rich, slim professional. George’s clumsy effort to dissuade Matthais from continuing the affair also boomerangs, and his wife instead moves out to live in a beautiful house rented by Matthias by the beach at Houlgate. Their his son, almost simultaneously, leaves for England with Melanie. After a year or so, they meet by chance at a gas station, both content. Mina is enjoying a world of fine dining, skiing holidays in Switzerland, and expensive clothes. George has purchased a television to bring some noise to the house again. Codirected by Gérard Depardieu and Frédéric Aubertin, the film provides a glimpse of how women and members of the upper classes are able to assert themselves — a rich woman holds soirées for the important people of the town, a middle-class woman sheds a working-class husband for a rich paramour, and the daughter of a rich woman rebels by running away from home with a young man whom she clearly controls. What the film does not explain is what happens when the bridge is completed, as presumably Matthias will return to his wife in Nice, as well as how two fifteen-year-olds will survive on the streets of England. The romanticism of the plot, dealing maturely with unrequited love, suggests that George will await Mina’s eventual return, while the children will also come back when Lisbeth can no longer count on allowances sent by Claire. In real life, nevertheless, Depardieu and Bouquet are happily married. MH |