The Cinematheque

New Restoration

“Moves delicately across the underbelly of an urban nightmare, revealing what Fassbinder has so aptly called the ​‘soft fascism’ of the modern world … Beneath a modest, self-effacing surface, Le Pont du Nord offers one of the most visionary film experiences of recent years.”

David Ehrenstein, LA Weekly

Paris, as the title of Jacques Rivette’s debut feature put it, belongs to whoever can claim it, but in Le Pont du Nord it might be the last lawless outpost of a dying world. This panoptic Babylon filled with mythic beasts, men named Max, and sphinxlike trials appears to be rigged against a quixotic duo: Marie (Bulle Ogier) and Baptiste (Pascale Ogier, Bulle’s daughter). Baptiste is introduced like the independent motorcyclist of Howard Hawks’s Red Line 7000; when she crashes into Marie, breathing her first free air after serving time for bank robbery, their pasts (and performance styles) are redirected toward a singular destination. While Marie is beset by maladies (prison-like claustrophobia and painful memories), Baptiste is a kata-practising warrior whose theft of a map, imprinted with the ancient board game ​“Game of the Goose,” provides the open-air film with its orbiting structure of coincidental reunions—if coincidences truly exist in this world.

In French with English subtitles

“Alludes to the French political scandals of the previous seven years, and the final sequence takes place on the very site of one of them … It’s a conspiratorial spider’s web, a marked map of Paris, and intermittently a kid’s game … The most alive movie I’ve [seen] this year.”

Jonathan Rosenbaum

“Pascale Ogier brings an exhilarating feral passion to her role … This movie may be her greatest showcase.”

Richard Brody, The New Yorker