Lulu on the Bridge

Released 1998
Stars Harvey Keitel, Mira Sorvino, Gina Gershon, Mandy Painkin, Vanessa Redgrave, Willem Dafoe
Directed by Paul Auster

Harvey Keitel plays a successful saxophonist who, having been wounded after a gunman opened fire during a performance, loses a lung and hence his ability to play. As music is his life, he wanders around dejected and bitter that the bullet wasn't fatal. Soon after making a full recovery he finds a briefcase beside a corpse. Unable to help himself he takes it and finds within a phone number and a mysterious blue rock which emits a beautiful light as it levitates through the dark. The phone number leads him to an aspiring actress (Mira Sorvino). When he presents her with the rock, it causes them to fall in love. Sound bizarre? That's just the start.

Summary by Frank Curigliano

SPOILER ALERT: Everything I'm going to talk about involves the ending. I was immediately turned off by the stilted dialogue and stiff acting, but the occasional unnatural dialogue started me thinking this may be a dream. There were several lines that were delivered in a way that people just don't speak. This had to be either poor writing or a clue that we were not in the natural world. Later with Dr. Van Horn (Willem Dafoe) it becomes more obvious and near the end in the bar we're pretty much told straight-out that Izzy is dying, and the entire film is an attempt by Izzy (Harvey Keitel) to redeem his tortured soul before he dies. The final scenes with Izzy and the final shot of Celia (Mira Sorvino) watching the ambulance drive by with the siren turned off were powerful and saved the film for me. -- Bill Alward May 26, 2001

P.S. The scene where Mira's character struggled to open the CD brought a big smile to my face.