Daniel Auteuil's La Fille du puisatier (2011)

This is a fairy story, the flipside of Frédéric Mistral's tragic Mireille, and a remake of Marcel Pagnol's film of the same name starring Raimu and Fernandel (which I've not seen). The prince is Jacques Mazel (Nicolas Duvauchelle), a guy born into wealth, and the princess is Patricia Amoretti (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey), the well digger's daughter.

This is set slightly before World War II breaks out, Patricia is pregnant with no hope of marrying the future father, the parents of Jacques won't entertain the thought of their son Jacques being the father, and anyway he's gone off to fight and is soon killed. Meanwhile, Patricia's father has to disown her because of the shame of having an 'illegitimate' child in the family. (We'll forget the sub-plot of Félipe (Kad Merad) wanting to marry Patricia so as not to complicate things.)

Anyway, Jacques comes back from the dead and wants to marry Patricia, which will be done as soon as possible, Jacque's parents are very pleased to be grandparents, and all things are resolved: a real fairy story with a happy end. The Mazel parents live in Salon, although I thought it a rather long way for Patricia (from a neighbouring hamlet) to go to Meet Jacques (before he went to war), but then this was called 'La Chapelle Saint Julien' so made out to be somewhere else, although the chapel shown in the still below is in fact the Chapelle Saint Sixte in Egalières, as shown on the cover of Maurice Pezet's book Egalières-en-Provence (1970):

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.