[Film Review] Lovers at Shinbashi – Love in the Crack

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This post was last edited by arabbit on 2010-1-5 at 15:26. “Lovers on the Pont Neuf” is a French film that I have always loved; its plot consists of many fragmented scenes. It tells the story of a strange pair of lovers – the woman is a painter and the daughter of a colonel who is madly in love with a man who plays the cello, but she is abandoned by him heartlessly. As a result, she gives up on herself and spends her days wandering the streets in the darkness, disheveled and holding her sketchbook. One day, while walking on the street, she saw a destitute man lying drunk on the road; a speeding car ran over his leg and crushed it. She watched numbly as he was taken away by a shelter vehicle, then drew his face. Her vision was deteriorating due to some special eye disease, and having lost hope in life, she began to sleep on the streets. She chose a bridge as a place to rest temporarily, and that bridge happened to be the man’s territory. The man who had left the shelter saw her lying there under a thin blanket; he was already disabled as a result of a car accident. He stared at his own portrait for a long time, very carefully. So the next morning, before the woman woke up, he went to the faucet and scrubbed hard at the dirt that had accumulated on his body over many days… And thus love arose between two people who were extremely depressed and hopeless. The man cherished this hard-won love very much; for her, he would do anything: he would read the breakup letters written by her boyfriend, go to her place to look through her notebooks, follow her everywhere, and with a limp leg, race ahead of her to threaten the man playing the cello under the bridge, telling him never to come back again… His methods were aggressive and brutal, yet they were also filled with deep affection and willingness to go to any extreme: while she slept on the broken bridge, he carefully turned off the street light so that she could sleep peacefully ； He drank alcohol and sprayed it on the torch in his hand, creating brilliant lights in the air for her time and again; with the little money he had, he bought cheap fish at the market to help nourish her body ； He and the woman sang and danced wildly on the New Bridge as fireworks exploded, as happy as two children... The woman finally found the man who played the cello, killed him, then came to him with a gun, smiling weakly; there were fifteen bullets in the gun – seven for each of them – and they fired wildly into the air, venting their anger at the world. With the last bullet left, the woman fell asleep tiredly, giving him the gun so that he could throw it away. He kept the woman’s gun as a treasure, carefully attaching it to his waist. Then the woman heard a thud, not realizing that it was his shoe that had fallen into the water... By this point, the woman could hardly see the world around her anymore; everything around her became increasingly blurred. The man stayed by her side carefully, acting as her eyes, making exaggerated movements in front of her so that she could still perceive the world. He rolled around comically, when suddenly he saw a large photo of the woman – it was an announcement posted by her family seeking her. The woman in the photo appeared noble and beautiful, and the announcement stated that if she returned now, there might be a chance to cure her eyes. He stared blankly at the beauty in the picture that did not belong to him, feeling cold all over. He sent the woman away and then returned alone to that photo, tearing it apart frantically. But then he realized that the entire bridge was covered with her photos; those photos and words mocked him constantly. In a fit of madness, he set fire to the whole bridge, destroying those beautiful photos that tormented him incessantly. But the whole world was already filled with news of this; he continued to destroy everything that might take her away, including a train and the train driver who arrived later, as the sides of the train were also covered with her photos… Yet, the woman ultimately left forever, and the source of the news was the radio he gave her. After the woman left, he used the only bullet in that gun to shoot himself in the hand; having lost her, the whole world seemed meaningless to him. At that time, he was brought before court on charges of murder and sentenced to three years in prison. This is not the **end of the story; between people like him and her, love should not exist. If it does, then it is destined to be a love without a future. Three years later, a woman came to pick him up from prison. The woman who had regained her vision and her identity wore neat short hair; she was as noble and beautiful as in the photos, no longer the disheveled woman he had known three years earlier. They returned to the newly repaired bridge and talked happily. He thought that was the end, but in the end the woman suggested going home. His heart was once again filled with sorrow. For the last time, he rushed forward without hesitation, hugged her, and they jumped into the water together... I thought that was the end, but the real ending was that they boarded a ship together and fled from that place, searching for a place where their love could hide... As the movie ended, Juliette Binoche’s blank, expressionless face remained firmly etched in my mind. French art films are romantic and aesthetic; therefore, they cannot accept the cruelty of reality. Even in the story of love between a beggar and a princess, they want to ensure a happy ending for them. As for the little unhappinesses that arise in life thereafter, those are not things worth recording.