Girl on the Bridge

Actress/chanteuse Vanessa Paradis, best known as the mother of Johnny Depp’s child, is charming, no doubt, but charming enough to hang an entire movie on? Not by some distance. Nevertheless, that’s the gamble Patrice Leconte takes with this winsome feature, enjoyment of which rests entirely on one’s ability to enjoy watching the gamine starlet for an hour and a half. The normally capable Daniel Auteuil is clenched and strident as a washed-up circus knife-thrower, and Paradis is meant to be the girl who pulls him back from the brink, restoring his faith in himself by — what else? — serving as his human target. With what’s no doubt meant to be naughty explicitness, their act is filmed like a sexual encounter, as Paradis inhales lustily as each knife slams into the wood near her body. But her character is conceived more as a creature than a human being, some flighty, magical, free spirit, and Paradis simply doesn’t have the charisma to pass as such. She’s pretty, all right, but she acts with all the grace of a block of wood.

—Sam Adams