Patrice Leconte's La Fille sur le pont | The Girl on the Bridge (1999)

Starring Vanessa Paradis (as Adèle) and Daniel Auteuil (as Gabor), La Fille sur le pont is partly a thriller, partly a weird, very off-centre love story. Adèle is a troubled girl with a troubled history who is about to jump off a bridge. Gabor comes along and tries is save her, but she jumps anyway, he follows her and saves her anyway.

Gabor is a knife thrower, the man who throws knives at girls and whose skill means he misses: well, almost always. What has Adèle to lose but have knives thrown at her as they both make lots of money, visit different countries and live a life on the edge: the edge of a knife blade.

This is a very odd film, revealing a strange attraction in which Gabor's phallic blades must always miss, in which Adèle's fear seems to be mixed with the thrill – almost – of orgasm. Not that there's any sex between them though, although they seems jealous of each other when seen in an amorous act with another person.

This is a film of chance, winners and losers, a magic-filled fantasy in which the viewer too is on the edge. Eventually Adèle leaves a liner where they're performing, takes a lifeboat on a whim with a man she steals from his wife. And the wife continues the act on the boat as the woman Gabor throws knives at, until a knife pierces her leg.

And Gabor is washed up on the shore of his own existence, living in poverty until he is the one waiting to jump from the bridge. Until Adèle comes along that is. The wheel has come full circle.