While I don't condone infidelity, affairs can make for great cinema. However, not in this movie despite featuring two stars, Meryl Steep and Clint Eastwood, whose talents are wasted here. Streep's at times compelling performance is expended on a film which manipulates viewer emotions so they don't see this affair for what it is. It shouldn't be considered a great love story just because it's the wife who is cheating on the husband, not the reverse. It is not poignant, sensitive, and romantic (as often described) but instead involves boredom, lust, and naive schoolgirl thinking far more than genuine love. Yes, it does have wonderful cinematography but viewers shouldn't confuse the beauty of the Iowa scenery as indicating that this illicit relationship was in any way beautiful. When you get past the acting and the scenery...
Here we have a housewife, Francesca, longing to travel and bored with her faithful, hard working, and decent but dull farmer husband and unexciting country life. While her husband is off at the State Fair with their teenage children, she has an affair with a stranger who chances her way, a ruggedly handsome, world traveling photographer named Robert. She foolishly concludes, after a few conversations and sexual encounters (some of which occur in the marital bed she shares with her husband, not exactly endearing), that her new man, a charismatic wanderer, is her true love. Of course her husband 'doesn't understand her' but her lover, who has known her for a few days, is her soul mate who understands her completely. (Would viewers be as sympathetic to a man whose wife didn't understand him, who had an affair because he suddenly found his soul mate and contemplated leaving his family so he could go off with his lover to follow his dreams???)
From the onset Francesca is miserable living in a house in the middle of nowhere but she has only herself to blame. Wasn't she aware when she married him that her husband was a farmer, that they would be living in the country?? There would have been hobbies and interests she could have pursued, even living in the country, where she might have found some degree of fulfillment and which wouldn't have upset her husband, especially given that her children were getting older all the time so likely to permit her more freedom.
Francesca should have discussed her needs, wants, and dreams WITH HER HUSBAND! Admittedly he wasn't exactly sensitive but neither did he appear to be a monster who would have cared nothing about his wife's unhappiness, had she made him aware of the full extent of it. She never really made much effort to open her heart up to him. While she did remain with her family, playing the self sacrificing martyr and suffering for years in silence are not admirable, IMO. She stoically 'did her duty' but never attempted to make anything better of her marriage.
Who is to say that if she had gone off with Robert, he wouldn't have dumped her when she started to bore him? Having one failed marriage behind him and a history of reluctance to commit, he didn't come across to me as a very promising life partner. If Robert had really loved Francesca, he would have thought of her best interests instead of selfishly encouraging her to abandon her children. The dancing scene where they end up in bed comes across as a cliché seduction, nothing original or memorable. The truck scene in the rain is supposedly so moving but how can anyone sympathize with a woman even considering leaving her teenage children for her lover of four days?
Unwisely, Francesca chooses to write a tell-all journal about the affair to be read by her adult children after her death, requesting that her ashes be scattered off a particular covered bridge to join her lover's ashes. I found this neither romantic nor touching but selfish and pointless, serving only to upset and potentially hurt her adult children. If she and Robert genuinely had this great love, surely it wouldn't have required some grand romantic mingling of their ashes off that bridge to prove it. Of course these children, a rather uninspiring pair who contributed nothing positive to this movie, quickly become understanding and are not (as would be more believable) devastated about their mother's infidelity and especially learning that their father wasn't her true love. In fact, we're to believe this revelation actually helped them sort out their own romantic messes. The modern Hollywood message, I guess.
Had she not chosen to risk hurting her children with her after-death revelations, I might have felt some sympathy for Francesca wasting so much of her life based on four days of the romantic, exciting, passionate early phase of a new relationship, foolishly pining for a man who likely would have brought her unhappiness even if she had been free.
Those who want a truly moving film about an affair should watch the 1945 Brief Encounter. It has class. Much the same idea -- bored middle-aged housewife has short term liaison with exciting new man but unlike this film, the wife realizes what she does have in her husband and, contrary to the cliché about not being understood, relates her tale as though addressing her husband, the only person in the world who would understand. It perfectly contrasts committed married love versus the excitement of a new romance. And its heroine, a very sympathetic character, would NEVER have deliberately hurt her adult children for such a pointless whim as the ashes. Alas, Bridges is no Brief Encounter.
Here we have a housewife, Francesca, longing to travel and bored with her faithful, hard working, and decent but dull farmer husband and unexciting country life. While her husband is off at the State Fair with their teenage children, she has an affair with a stranger who chances her way, a ruggedly handsome, world traveling photographer named Robert. She foolishly concludes, after a few conversations and sexual encounters (some of which occur in the marital bed she shares with her husband, not exactly endearing), that her new man, a charismatic wanderer, is her true love. Of course her husband 'doesn't understand her' but her lover, who has known her for a few days, is her soul mate who understands her completely. (Would viewers be as sympathetic to a man whose wife didn't understand him, who had an affair because he suddenly found his soul mate and contemplated leaving his family so he could go off with his lover to follow his dreams???)
From the onset Francesca is miserable living in a house in the middle of nowhere but she has only herself to blame. Wasn't she aware when she married him that her husband was a farmer, that they would be living in the country?? There would have been hobbies and interests she could have pursued, even living in the country, where she might have found some degree of fulfillment and which wouldn't have upset her husband, especially given that her children were getting older all the time so likely to permit her more freedom.
Francesca should have discussed her needs, wants, and dreams WITH HER HUSBAND! Admittedly he wasn't exactly sensitive but neither did he appear to be a monster who would have cared nothing about his wife's unhappiness, had she made him aware of the full extent of it. She never really made much effort to open her heart up to him. While she did remain with her family, playing the self sacrificing martyr and suffering for years in silence are not admirable, IMO. She stoically 'did her duty' but never attempted to make anything better of her marriage.
Who is to say that if she had gone off with Robert, he wouldn't have dumped her when she started to bore him? Having one failed marriage behind him and a history of reluctance to commit, he didn't come across to me as a very promising life partner. If Robert had really loved Francesca, he would have thought of her best interests instead of selfishly encouraging her to abandon her children. The dancing scene where they end up in bed comes across as a cliché seduction, nothing original or memorable. The truck scene in the rain is supposedly so moving but how can anyone sympathize with a woman even considering leaving her teenage children for her lover of four days?
Unwisely, Francesca chooses to write a tell-all journal about the affair to be read by her adult children after her death, requesting that her ashes be scattered off a particular covered bridge to join her lover's ashes. I found this neither romantic nor touching but selfish and pointless, serving only to upset and potentially hurt her adult children. If she and Robert genuinely had this great love, surely it wouldn't have required some grand romantic mingling of their ashes off that bridge to prove it. Of course these children, a rather uninspiring pair who contributed nothing positive to this movie, quickly become understanding and are not (as would be more believable) devastated about their mother's infidelity and especially learning that their father wasn't her true love. In fact, we're to believe this revelation actually helped them sort out their own romantic messes. The modern Hollywood message, I guess.
Had she not chosen to risk hurting her children with her after-death revelations, I might have felt some sympathy for Francesca wasting so much of her life based on four days of the romantic, exciting, passionate early phase of a new relationship, foolishly pining for a man who likely would have brought her unhappiness even if she had been free.
Those who want a truly moving film about an affair should watch the 1945 Brief Encounter. It has class. Much the same idea -- bored middle-aged housewife has short term liaison with exciting new man but unlike this film, the wife realizes what she does have in her husband and, contrary to the cliché about not being understood, relates her tale as though addressing her husband, the only person in the world who would understand. It perfectly contrasts committed married love versus the excitement of a new romance. And its heroine, a very sympathetic character, would NEVER have deliberately hurt her adult children for such a pointless whim as the ashes. Alas, Bridges is no Brief Encounter.