Lulu on the Bridge

Lulu on the Bridge is the first solo film effort by writer Paul Auster. He got a taste of directing when as scriptwriter for Smoke and Blue in the Face he found himself in the director’s chair when Wayne Wang fell ill. The producers and much of the cast of Smoke were eager to work with Auster, so in Lulu on the Bridge we also see Harvey Keitel, Victor Argo, Harold Perinneau and even a flash of Stockard Channing.Izzy Maurer (Keitel) is a jazz saxophonist whose life changes totally from one day to the next when he is hit by a stray bullet in a New York nightclub. After his recovery, he happens to find a corpse. In the dead man’s bag he finds ahandkerchief with a phone number and a mysterious stone. The number leads him to the young actress Celia Burns. Influenced by the magical stone, they fall in love instantly. When Celia is cast in the role of Lulu in a remake of Pandora’s Box, their ways part for a couple of days, they think. But the stone is sought after: Izzy is kidnapped and interrogated by the shady Dr. Van Horn. In this way, a journey starts to the heart of Pandora’s Box in Izzy’s soul.Auster’s main themes, chance and isolation, take on a moving form in Lulu on the Bridge, helped by fine camera-work by Sakharov and a beautiful score by Graeme Revell.