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
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