Girl on the Bridge (2008)

The sexual symbolism in Girl on the Bridge couldn't be more...pointed. Adele (Vanessa Paradis) is a lovelorn girl so depressed about her cosmically bad luck with men that she's preparing to jump into the Seine. Gabor (Daniel Auteuil) is a down-and-out circus performer whose luck miraculously changes for the good the moment he saves her from drowning. Throwing knives is his specialty, and in Adele, Gabor finds the perfect partner to receive his thrusts -- a woman willing to abandon herself, to risk it all.

This wildly romantic fable works, swept along by director Patrice Leconte's almost giddy black-and-white imagery, and by the sexual sparks between luscious model/pop star Paradis (a.k.a. Johnny Depp's girl) and a burning Auteuil, who won a Cesar for the role. Leconte (Ridicule) gives his heart to the luck of romance, to the dream-state visual style of Fellini, and most lyrically, to the passion of the dagger-point swoon. A-

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