The film follows a love story between two young vagrants: Alex, a would-be circus performer addicted to alcohol and sedatives, and Michèle, a painter with a disease that is slowly turning her blind.

[3][a] Set around the Pont Neuf, Paris's oldest bridge, while it was closed for repairs, Les Amants du Pont-Neuf depicts a love story between two young vagrants, Alex (Denis Lavant) and Michèle (Juliette Binoche).

The capital's festivities for the 1989 bicentennial of the French Revolution happen in the background to the story: while the skies of Paris are lit up with an extravagant fireworks display, Alex steals a speedboat and takes Michèle water-skiing on the Seine.

[6][17][18][9] In this interim period, Carax circulated videocassettes of the completed footage to create interest, and received praise from film-makers such as Steven Spielberg and Patrice Chéreau, who encouraged him to continue.

[9][27][16] In June 1989, Dominique Vignet, together with the Swiss millionaire Francis von Buren, agreed to invest 30 million francs based on the rushes filmed the previous year.

[28][29] Details included the bridge's equestrian statue of Henri IV, a facade of the nearby La Samaritaine department store with working lights, the entrance to the local Métro station, and a replica of the adjacent Vert-Galant park with actual trees.

[14][9][13][30] It became apparent that the new injection of cash was not enough for the total cost of construction and to finish the film;[27] sources give the amount of money already spent by this point as 80-90 million francs,[14][6][27] and Le Monde calculated that a further 80 would be needed to complete the project.

For nearly a year, the site in Lansargues was almost deserted except for a guard;[23] additionally, a number of storms followed over that winter causing massive water damage to the uncompleted set.

[9][31] To Fechner and Carax's regret, in January 1991 the farmer who owned the site had the entire bridge set destroyed;[9][24] it had attracted visitors as well as money to the area, and the mayor of Lansargues had hoped it might be preserved.

[7][34][40][d] According to Carax, she "insisted" on performing the dangerous water-skiing scene herself (at one point in filming she nearly drowned);[24][44][38] she also put her career on hold to make herself available during the lengthy production delays, turning down job offers from Robert De Niro, Elia Kazan and Krzysztof Kieślowski.

[9][45][15][29][46][47] Binoche was one of the cast and crew members who combined to pay the security guard on the Lansargues site while filming stopped,[21][9] and was personally involved in fundraising, meeting producers, lawyers and the Minister of Culture.

[28] It opened in Britain in September 1992, and received positive reviews in The Guardian,[73] The Independent[74] and Empire,[35] though more enthusiastic were Sight and Sound ("exciting and innovative... one of the most visually exhilarating and surprising films of recent years"),[75] The Daily Telegraph ("this strange, beautiful film... shows Carax as one of the most poetic, individual talents in European cinema"),[61] and The Sunday Telegraph ("a glorious monument to the follies of megalomaniac film-making").

[g] While praising the technical achievement of Vandestien's set design, and the power of the fireworks and speedboat sequences, he was cool about the film overall: one of the most extravagant and delirious follies perpetrated on French soil since Marie-Antoinette played the milkmaid at the Petit Trianon.

[13]Klawans, who served on the festival's selection committee, believes that Canby's review harmed the film's USA distribution chances;[28][29] David Sterritt suggests that potential American distributors were put off by stories of the troubled production and cost overruns.

[78][22][79][44][80] Critics have however seen echoes of specific sequences in successful anglophone films released in the interim: in The English Patient (1996), of Binoche being lifted up to see a painting;[29][81] in Titanic (1997), of two lovers embracing at the prow of a boat.

[29][8] CNN.com struck similarly hyperbolic notes: "the sort of multi-leveled exhilaration that can be achieved on film when talented artists bother to give it a go... more flashes of legitimate brilliance than you'll find in a dozen helpings of Armageddon".

[44] Kevin Thomas in The Los Angeles Times called the film "a go-for-broke dazzler"; he rated Binoche's performance higher than her Oscar-winning work in The English Patient, as did Marjorie Baumgarten in The Austin Chronicle.

[82][58] In contrast, Charles Taylor in Salon called Binoche "mannered, utterly inauthentic" and Lavant "singularly unappealing", summing up Carax's work by asking "do we have to pretend that his films are about anything more than his second-hand image-mongering?