Lulu on the Bridge

I haven't read any of Paul Auster's fiction, but I have seen a number of the films of his screenplays, including Smoke and The Music of Chance, both intriguing and somewhat hallucinatory. His sole directorial effort, 1998's Lulu on the Bridge, made its way to the top of my Netflix queue and, not knowing anything about it, I was rewarded with an absorbing, mysterious film.

Harvey Keitel stars as a jazz saxophonist who is shot on stage by a crazed man. He loses a lung, and therefore is unable to play music again. He figures his life has lost its meaning, but after going to a dinner party at his ex-wife's, he finds a dead body on the street. He finds on the body two things--a napkin with a phone number on it and a small box containing a stone. The phone number belongs to a waitress, Mira Sorvino, and the stone has magical properties. Keitel and Sorvino, drawn together by the stone, embark on a romance, but there are sinister forces who want the stone back.

It's interesting that I saw this one day after Inception, because Lulu on the Bridge is a better example of the mysterious property of dreams. Lulu on the Bridge is like a dream--simulating real life, but with an air of the uncanny. Characters behave differently, and some things are accepted at face value, while the truth of the situation may be gnawing from within. This film defies expectations, and can not be predicted.

The title refers to the character Louise Brooks played in Pandora's Box, a classic silent film by G.W. Pabst. Sorvino' character is an actress who has landed a part in a remake (the director is played by Vanessa Redgrave). I'm not sure what Auster's intention was to connect his story to that of Lulu's, but it's got me interested in checking out Pandora's Box.

Also in the cast is Willem Dafoe, as another mysterious character. He has a long, fascinating scene with Keitel in which in interrogates the latter about his childhood. It's terrific and spooky.