Les Amants du Pont-Neuf () is a 1991 French film directed by Leos Carax, starring Juliette Binoche and Denis Lavant. The film follows a love story between two young vagrants: Alex, a would-be circus performer addicted to alcohol and sedatives, and Michèle, a painter with a disease that is slowly turning her blind. The streets, skies and waterways of Paris are used as a backdrop for the story in a series of set-pieces set during the French Bicentennial celebrations in 1989.
The film became notorious for its troubled and lengthy production and for the amount of money it was reported to have cost. It has been referred to several times as the most expensive French film ever made at the time of its release, although this has been contested.
The title refers to the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris. For various reasons, the film-makers ultimately built a scale replica of the bridge, which greatly increased the budget. Though it was released under its original title in other English-speaking territories, the North American title of the film is The Lovers on the Bridge, and, in a mistranslation of the original title, the Australian title is Lovers on the Ninth Bridge (instead of "Lovers on the New Bridge").
Plot
Set around the Pont Neuf, Paris's oldest bridge, while it was closed for repairs, Les Amants du Pont-Neuf depicts a love story between two young vagrants, Alex (Denis Lavant) and Michèle (Juliette Binoche). Alex is a street performer addicted to alcohol and sedatives; he scrapes together money by fire breathing and performing acrobatics (sometimes simultaneously). Michèle is a painter driven to a life on the streets because of a failed relationship and a disease which is slowly destroying her sight. Accompanied in her new environment only by a cat, she has grown up in a military family but is passionate about art and longs to see Rembrandt's self-portrait in the Louvre before her vision disappears entirely.
The pair's paths first cross when Alex has passed out, drunk, on the Boulevard de Sébastopol and Michèle makes a sketch of him. Later she is dazzled by one of his street exhibitions and the two become an item. The film portrays their harsh existence living on the bridge with Hans (Klaus Michael Grüber), an older vagrant. Hans is initially hostile to Michèle, but he has secret reasons for this. When he warms to her, he uses his former life to help her realise her dream. The capital's festivities for the 1989 bicentennial of the French Revolution happen in the background to the story: while the skies of Paris are lit up with an extravagant fireworks display, Alex steals a speedboat and takes Michèle water-skiing on the Seine.
Alex's love for Michèle proves to have a dark side, however. As her vision deteriorates, she becomes increasingly dependent on him. When a possible treatment for her condition becomes available, Michèle's family use street posters and radio appeals to trace her. Fearing that she will leave him if she receives the treatment, Alex tries to keep Michèle from becoming aware of her family's attempts to find her by burning the posters; but he also sets fire to the van of the bill-sticker putting them up, and the man is killed. The pair are separated when Alex goes to jail and Michèle has surgery; then, after his release, they meet up on the bridge for a last time. Alex's love for her is unchanged but Michèle has doubts and, enraged, Alex hurls both of them into the Seine. Underwater, they gaze at each other with new eyes in a moment of connection. A westbound barge picks them up, taking the pair onwards to the Atlantic and a new life.
Production
When he started planning it in 1987, Leos Carax wanted to make a simple film, originally intending to shoot in black and white and via Super 8. His first feature Boy Meets Girl had been a small affair (costing 3 million francs), whereas Mauvais Sang had been considerably larger and more costly (at 17 million), albeit more successful at the box office.
From the beginning, shooting a movie on a public bridge in the centre of Paris was complicated. The production team wanted to block off the bridge for three months, but the application was rejected. Instead, a model was created by the set designer Michel Vandestein. Initially, the intention was to film the daylight scenes on the actual bridge, and the night-time scenes on the simplified model. At this point, the budget was estimated at 32 million francs. After scouting in Orléans and the Paris area for locations to build the set, the film-makers settled on the town of Lansargues, in the department of Hérault in southern France. Construction began in August 1988.