Le Pont du Nord

One of the Years’s Ten Best. Of all the survivors of the French New Wave, Jacques Rivette remains the most thoroughly unpredictable (Godard is predictably unpredictable). His critics charge him with changing his theories too quickly from film to film, but it seems to me that an inconsistency of approach is more of a virtue than an evil in the search for new ways of making movies. LE PONT DU NORD is a loose, funny, largely improvised film in the form of a game, with Bulle Ogier (as afreshly released convict) and her daughter Pascale (as a stern teenager who imagines herself a kung fu knight) playing the map of Paris as if it were a “snakes-and-ladders” board. Rivette challenges the audience to figure out the rules – and the solution lies not in fantasy but in hard social, economic, and political reality (Dave Kehr, 1983).

In the presence of Bulle Orgier (actress).