THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY. Directed by Clint Eastwood; written by Richard LaGravenese; produced by Clint Eastwood and Kathleen Kennedy for Warner Bros. Starring Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood.
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You could make quite a stir (or at least get a lot of laughs) if you could time travel back to the early '80's, when Meryl Streep was making movies like Sophie's Choice, and predict that she and Clint Eastwood would team up someday. What an unbelievable combination!
Well, of course, here in the '90's, the old boy (Eastwood, that is) is getting a little more respect since he's shown he can direct really fine movies. (See Unforgiven and A Perfect World) And Streep has actually been seen in comedies, for goodness sakes, so her reputation is perhaps not as rarefied as it once was. And their pairing isn't quite as bizarre as it once would have seemed.
Still, though, it's bizarre. And in some ways even harder to get used to is the idea of Eastwood as a romantic lead. We are talking about Dirty Harry and the Outlaw Josey Wales here, after all.
And this isn't just any romance, but one that's been read by tons of people (judging from the length of its stay on the best-seller list) and that supposedly sets new standards for eroticism and tear-jerking potential. (I must admit I can't vouch for the book from personal experience; but I did see the "Doonesbury" parody.)
For those few of you who might not know the storyline, it's easy to summarize. Francesca (Streep) is a transplanted Italian who has lived for 20 years as an Iowa farm wife. Just after her husband and children depart for a few days at the fair, Robert (Eastwood) happens by, looking for covered bridges to photograph for National Geographic. And the rest, they say, is history.
The main reason that Bridges works as well as it does is Streep's performance. She's just as amazing an actress as ever, conveying complex emotions effortlessly with a gesture, a tilt of her head, a subtle inflection.
Eastwood looks good in his part, and does a more convincing job than I expected him to, when it comes to playing a lovesick loner. But he's simply not in Streep's class, and the mismatch is something you can never quite get past.
As a tear-jerker, Bridges is really first-rate, with sniffles echoing throughout the theater during most of the film. But as a romance or as a dramatic character study, it only gets you just a bit more than halfway across the stream.
June 14, 1995