The bridges of madison county
The bridges of Madison County
1/ The relationship between the two characters
Francesca Johnson is a farmer who lives in Iowa with her husband and children. She comes from Italy, she is a typical farmer’s wife, and she does the household tasks/chores. She was bored; her life was a daily routine until her family had gone to a contest. She decided to stay home and not to go with them because in a way it got her out of her daily routine. From the beginning of the film, we can notice she wasn’t enjoying her life, she was apart from her family: her children didn’t speak to her, and she listened to the songs that no one listened. Then Robert Kincaid, a photographer for the National Geographic, came. He had to take photos of the bridges and wanted to go to the Roseman Bridge and asked for the way. That was their first meeting. Francesca said that she could take him or tell him and that she didn’t care; it was up to him; as if nobody or nothing could get her out of her daily routine, as if her future was already mapped out. When they were on the bridge, we could see that there was a kind of attraction, maybe due to the curiosity because she met a person that she had never seen before; it was a new face in her daily routine. When they came back home, they discussed about their life and we realized that her life wasn’t what she expected. To her, America is a big state where she could have a full life, and instead she became a farmer in a small state. With Robert she discovered a new part of herself, she said “And in that moment, everything I knew to be true about myself up until then was gone. I was acting like another woman, yet I was more myself than ever before.” That kind of love turned Francesca into a brave woman; she didn’t care of the gossips and accepted to be with Robert.
Without Robert, she was trapped in her house, in her life with a husband that she didn’t truly love.
We can draw a parallel between the two characters: indeed they are like two