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SHGryphon
Reviews
Le pont rouge (1992)
Short, interesting, deeply weird
I saw this on a double bill with "Dream Deceivers," a similarly macabre documentary. The film is a short (21 minutes or so) deadpan look at life in a small valley community in Luxembourg, that tiny European country next to Belgium. In 1966 a red-painted traffic bridge was built to span the valley, forcing the residents to put up with a steady stream of traffic about a hundred feet above their rooftops. The "red bridge" nickname took on a spookier tone when it became popular with suicides from all over Europe. Residents of the town literally had to look up whenever they stepped outside, lest they be struck by a falling body. People would hear bodies crash through their roofs and into the rooms below. Children walking to school became knowledgeable about the ways human bodies are affected by falls from a great height. "Sometimes they're just lying on the street and they look all right, but you know they're really broken up inside," one child remarks.