What’s to be done after a long night of love-making? Go on a picnic, of course.
Eastwood’s picnic setup in Bridges of Madison County is stagy: a cloth on the grass, a cooler, oranges (never peeled), and apples (never eaten). Coca-Cola (never opened). It’s a step beyond Waller’s sudsy romantic novel, which does not have a picnic.
Johnson confides in her diary, “We decided to spend Wednesday away from Winterset. Away from Madison County. Away from pastures and bridges and people too familiar and reminders too painful. We let the day take us where it wanted.”— And the day includes a picnic on the grass.
At Eastwood’s dejeuner sur l’herbe, the lovers chat while Kinkaid photographs Francesca (click, click), and she smiles (click, click). As a token of love and remembrance, she gives Kinkaid her crucifix. “I remembered this last night after you left,” she says, placing it around his neck. It’s an ironic touch for an illicit love affair, though romantics will not see it so.
The food is picnic-fodder, untouched, uneaten.
The cast: Clint Eastwood as Robert Kincaid; Meryl Streep as Francesca Johnson.
See Robert James Waller. The Bridges of Madison County. New York: 1992; Clint Eastwood. The Bridges of Madison County (1995). Screenplay by Richard LaGravenese based on Waller’s novel (1992)