THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY (1995) **1/2 Call me post-sensitive, or post-Marxist, or whatever, but I'm mainly interested in stories about people who interest me. That would count out any character in this film. Clint Eastwood, and even more Meryl Streep, does a great job of bringing a slow character to life and making it real, but for the most part I couldn't care less. On an acting plane she's whatever she wants to be, and he's a kinder gentler Clint, which is probably the real one and immanently more appealing than Dirty Harry. Of course there are the universal issues of love and death, but if they're universal I might as well learn at a trough secured by people who fascinate me, of which there are many. Johnny Thunders for example, or Isadora Duncan. Of course those stories couldn't make use of the Hollywoodly narcissistic director Clint Eastwood knowing exactly how to shoot, what angle and light, the face of his star Clint Eastwood. I don't know that any actress has ever mastered accents as well as Ms. Streep, here's she's absolutely credible as an Italian émigré with years of Iowa wearing away on it; but middle American Protestant judgementalists have always bored me as much as they do her character, leaving me unsympathetic to anyone without the gumption to get the hell away from them. Still there's no denying the power of the closing fifteen or twenty minutes, even involving as they do characters, and actors (not the stars, obviously), absolutely unworthy of the attention of anyone interested in falling asleep or another reason to head to the bar.
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