Bridge on the River Cry

The scenes with Streep were finished in four weeks. ''It usually takes four months,'' she says, laughing. ''It was kind of a breakneck pace, but I never felt that in the playing of it. Everything was ready when we would walk in and sometimes he would shoot the rehearsal and move on. We all had to be right on top of our game. I was exhilarated.''

R-rated sex.
''This is a middle-aged romance — it's not about making out,'' says Eastwood. ''Most love stories are about younger people, a more formative thing, stories of passion. Here, they become friends before they become lovers. It's their conversation and mutual respect that gradually leads to love.''

Nevertheless, the MPAA's ratings board initially awarded Bridges an R rating — for one line: Francesca's sarcastic ''Or should we just f--- on the linoleum one last time?''

''The board never fails to amaze me, because it's so uneven,'' frets Eastwood. ''Did they value this in the same league as Natural Born Killers? I felt we should have the lesser category, PG-13.'' The director argued his case to the appeals board, which overturned the R by a vote of 12 to 2.

A dry eye in the house.
In an epilogue, the 67-year-old Francesca's withered hands (veins popping and mobility hampered by rubber bands Streep is said to have worn tied tightly around her wrists) ritualistically open her lover's letters. But long before the final scene, the filmmakers are counting on the audience's tears to flow. Says Streep, who admits she wept when she read the script: ''What moved me wasn't so much the love story as seeing Francesca years later, and the legacy she gave her children, giving them this glimpse of what she might have been.''

As he read Bridges' opening-day reviews, Spielberg says, he was relieved that so many critics were able to ''look at the movie separate from their experience with the book. I thought there'd be book backlash, that the movie wouldn't survive the bollixing the novel took, especially in Doonesbury.''

Spielberg needn't have worried. The film earned a solid $10.5 million its first weekend in theaters. And come Oscar time next April, The Bridges of Madison County might still be making its presence felt. That's not a bad fate for a movie that was made so quickly, in part because its director-star embraced his own mistakes. In fact, Eastwood printed scenes that other directors would consider slipups. ''Why be afraid to put in errors? It's the way things are,'' says Eastwood. ''I put in a take where [Robert] sort of drops his beer. He's in a strange kitchen...I didn't see it as a gloss movie. It needs the flies, the mosquitoes. I wanted reality. From grating carrots, there comes romance. There comes love. That's more lifelike than [using] gauzy lenses and beautiful wardrobe.''

(With reporting by Stephen Schaefer)