Review of Mr. & Mrs. Bridge (1990) by Jerry W — 07 Aug 2005

This is the second Merchant Ivory flm that I've seen (the first was the stunning and moving [i]Maurice[/i]) and the producer director team made up of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory let me down. [i]Mr. and Mrs. Bridge[/i], while having the same wonderfully detailed period setting that Merchant Ivory excels in, lacks any sort of plot to carry one through one scene after the other depicting the WWII era life of a Kansas city couple played by real life couple Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.

Basically shit happens and they live through it. Life normally doesn't have a plot: and true to that, the Bridges just live. Movies don't need plots to succeed but the genre settings they depict need to have more drama than they do here. In [i]Maurice[/i], the main character deals with his himosexuality over a span of years. From beginning to end more has occured than just the passage of time. The Bridges are not so dynamic and the story less focused. I won't go into what happens because the slightest detail in this movie of slightest details could spoil it.