Les Amants Du Pont Neuf

Starring: Denis Lavant, Juliette Binoche Director: Leos Carax Original UK Premiere: 1992 Dvd Release: 30th July, 2001 Number Of Discs: 1 Format: PAL, Subtitled, Widescreen, Region 2 Encoding Subtitled In: English

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DVD Extras: Paris may have been filmed countless times before & since, but rarely has its beauty been so captured as here. With the action taking place mainly at night or twilight, the colours are rich & vivid or ghostly pale; both extremes are beautifully captured on this format. Resplendent with many stunning set pieces , this is one of the most visually sumptuous films of recent years. Carax, too, makes great use of silence, allowing the sounds of the city to reflect the mood of his characters. Extras are sadly virtually non-existent beyond the usual scene selection & biographies, but the film's style demands that it be seen on the only format to do it justice.

Les Amants du Pont Neuf is a film that once more shows us Paris as a city of romance, but from a very different viewpoint than we might expect. The young lovers this time around are Alex & Michelle, two of the many homeless people sleeping rough on the streets of the capital. Their particular abode is the bridge of the title, the oldest such structure in the city, which they share with the older, wiser Hans. Gradually drawn together, they look for & find love in what is a particularly loveless & harsh environment. Director Leos Carax created a film that combined great beauty with an almost nightmarish reality, particularly in a gruesome opening image of a homeless hostel which seems to have a documentary feel to it. Juliette Binoche & Dennis Lavant are superb as the lovers, drawing us in to their world of joy, despair & anger. Ultimately, Les Amants du Pont Neuf manages to pull off that rare feat of being both visually stunning & emotionally engaging.

Juliette Binoche is a French actress, born in Paris, France. Born to a movie-director father & an actress mother, at age 15 she was sent to Paris to study at a specialized arts high school, after which she attended the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts. At age 18 she was given a bit part in the small independent film Liberty Belle. While trying to build her career over the next five years, she worked as a clerk at a Paris department store & earned extra cash as a painters model. She was 24 when she received her first big break with a role in Philip Kaufman s film The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Blue, part 1 of Krzysztof Kieslowski s highly acclaimed Three Colors trilogy, for which she won the 1993 Cesar Award for best actress. During her career, in addition to winning, she has been nominated five times for the Cesar Award for Best Actress. In 1996 her role as Hana, a Canadian nurse tending to a wounded stranger during WWII, in the blockbuster film The English Patient, brought her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Posters Of The English Patient

Editors Choice: Hidden, In My Country, The English Patient, Code Unknown, La Veuve De Saint Pierre, Les Enfants Du Siecle, Alice Et Martin, Damage, View DVDology

Léos Carax is a French-American film director, critic & writer. Carax is noted for his poetic style & his totured depictions of love. His first major work was Boy Meets Girl & his notable works include Lovers on the Bridge & the controversial Pola X His professional name an anagram of his first & middle names. Léos Carax was born Alexandre Oscar Dupont in Suresnes, a commune in the suburbs of Paris, France. His mother was American & his father French. He began his film career with a series of short films & as a film critic, before he released Boy Meets Girl. That piece established Caraxs reputation for a mature visual style. It also saw the first grouping of Carax with Denis Lavant & cinematographer Jean-Yves Escoffier. He followed the piece with the science fiction themed Bad Blood in 1986, which alienated some of his audience, but the work continued to explore the complexities of love in the modern world, this time through a darker, more criminal viewpoint.

Editors Choice: Les Amants Du Pont Neuf, View DVDology

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