The Bridges of Madison County (1995)

Directed by Clint Eastwood. Starring Meryl Streep, Clint Eastwood, Victor Slezak, Annie Corley, Jim Haynie, Phyllis Lyons, Richard Lage, Debra Monk. [PG-13]

Robert James Waller’s unbearable bestseller becomes a tolerable hit movie in the hands of screenwriter Richard LaGravenese and director Eastwood, though it’s the lead performances (Streep’s especially) that finds the moving austerity of loneliness and longing. Framing segments set in the present with the adult children of Streep’s character discovering her journal, which detail their mother’s impassioned affair with rambling photojournalist Eastwood, are stilted, ragged, and poorly-performed, a burden on the bloated runtime that should have been trimmed to the quick or dropped altogether; when the film simply focuses on the two leads and their tentative eroticism, however, it usually works. The director’s quiet naturalism suits the material well, undercutting almost all trace of bodice-ripper excess. Lovingly photographed by Jack N. Green.

62/100