Edition: U.S. / Global  ´The Bridge´: There´s No Stoppin´ Mom´s
Cheatin´ Heart  Published: October 27, 2000  Nobody does
adultery in the movies more knowingly than the French. And
although "The Bridge" doesn't contribute anything new to the
literature on the subject, it glides down a well-trodden path
with hardly a misstep until the very end, when it suddenly bumps
into a wall. The film's message is as unsettling as it is
familiar: adulterous passion, once aroused, follows its own
laws, cannot be reasoned with and often can't be stopped. That's
just the way of the flesh.  What's faintly offbeat about "The
Bridge" is its sexual role reversal. The cheater who falls in
love with a stranger encountered in a movie theater and
considers chucking the family and running off happens to be the
wife. When we first meet Mina (Carole Bouquet), whose unemployed
older husband, Georges (Gérard Depardieu), recently lost his
small masonry business, she is leaving a theater showing "Jules
and Jim." The story is set in Normandy