For all its preoccupation with art and creativity, Paul Auster’s
Lulu on the Bridge doesn’t constitute a great example of either: it feels more arbitrary than instinctive, more clunkily
calculated than deeply felt, and barely relevant to anything beyond its own
peculiar boundaries. Auster (whose solo directorial debut this was) doesn’t
seem like a director of any particular finesse, whether in matters of framing
and blocking or in coaxing his actors into interesting territory (not that the likes
of Keitel, Dafoe and Redgrave can’t mostly take care of themselves). Even so, I
find the movie tends to resurface in my mind from time to time – if nothing
else, for its pleasure with the idea of filmmaking both in itself (drawing
prominently on Pandora’s Box and Singin’ in the Rain and engaging in
brief pastiches of various genres, in one of which Lou Reed pops up to play - as
the credits put it - Not Lou Reed), and as a means of unlocking something formative
and fundamental. The sense of discovery encompasses language (the repeated use
of binary questions – is one an ocean or a river; an owl or a hummingbird, etc.);
dredging up of childhood memories and traumas; unexplained magic (a stone which
emits a mysterious blue light and levitates, conveying a deep feeling of
possibility and connection to those who come into its orbit); and even the
formative relationship between man and turd (evoked in one of the weirder blocks
of dialogue ever given to Mandy Patinkin). The evocation of the Berlin Wall and
a few scenes set in Ireland provide the faintest of political seasonings. It’s disappointing
at the end when all of this is revealed as an apparent deathbed fantasy and/or transmigration of souls, pushing the movie’s resonances inward when they needed (in
the way of Jacques Rivette’s Celine and
Julie go Boating, a vastly superior film that nevertheless may provide a sporadic reference
point here) to push outward. Still, if only all cinematic failures were as
intriguing…
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