Mr. & Mrs. Bridge

Based on two novels by Evan S. Connell, Mr. & Mrs. Bridge follows Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward’s title characters as they’re marriage is tested over the course of many years. Filmmaker James Ivory, armed with Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s screenplay, delivers a gentle, deliberately-paced drama that succeeds as a showcase for several undeniably terrific performances, as stars Newman and Woodward turn in compelling and impressively lived-in work that goes a long way towards compensating for the increasingly erratic narrative – with the actors’ top-notch efforts certainly matched by such first-class periphery players as Kyra Sedgwick, Blythe Danner, and Austin Pendleton. It’s clear, then, that the picture’s overall impact is hampered and dulled by an episodic narrative that grows more and more hit-and-miss as time progresses, and although the movie boasts its share of compelling sequences (eg Newman’s character refuses to leave his restaurant table despite an approaching tornado), Mr. & Mrs. Bridge‘s plodding second half ultimately does ensure that the whole thing peters out to a fairly distressing extent – which does, in the end, cement the film’s place as a decent-enough adaptation that could’ve benefited from some judicious trimming.

**1/2 out of ****