Apparently in his native France Luc Besson is referred to as an American director for making what come across as very Spielburgesque commercial films. Which makes it even funnier when they get chopped up or remade by American producers, like it's some sort of taunt to French critics: "You think that's American? WE'LL show you American!" Anyways, he has declared he will likely not direct any more films after Arthur et les Minimoys, his tenth, although he has written several others (including District B13). So since nobody asked, here's a look at his ten films, most of which I haven't seen.
1. Le Dernier Combat (1983)
This is one I've never gotten around to seeing, starring Jean Reno as a scarred survivor of a crumbling post-apocalyptic world in which humans have lost the ability to speak. It's a cheaply made, black and white, stark image of that world, expanding on an even cheaper black and white short film, which started the trend for Besson of casting Jean Reno in every movie he made for the next 12 years.
2. Subway (1985)
I love Subway, although I cannot explain why. Christophe Lambert, who was the mysterious Scotsman with an intermittent French accent in Highlander, gets to create another mysterious, unnervingly strange character here in Fred. This film is full of another Besson smirk, English names that sound ridiculous in French: this film's characters include Fred (Fhhhhred), Big Bill (Beeg Beeyill), and Batman et Robin (Botmon and Rhhhoa-Been). Fred is a strange character who crashes a high class party in a tuxedo and impulsively cracks a safe, then escapes into the Paris Metro where he hides out with the strange subculture that lives underground, including the Florist, the Drummer, and a roller-skating purse snatcher (The Roller), all pursued by the underground crime-fighting duo of Parisian cops nicknamed Batman and Robin, as well as the smitten wife of the man whose safe Fred has cracked. There's a non-conformist charm in all of these characters, who lie and steal and lurk in the tunnels underneath a thriving city.
3. The Big Blue
I don't care what anybody says, this is one of my favorite movies of all time, and at one time was my best trick to prove my romantic heart to vulnerable, cerebral girls. (Not that I was trying, it just seemed to happen that way... I've been assured I'm only non-maliciously manipulative.) This is based on the true story of Jacques Mayoll and Enzo Molinari, the first two free divers to go below 100 meters, at a time when conventional wisdom was that a diver's lungs would collapse under that pressure, and such a dive would be suicide without diving equipment. The rivalry between childhood friends Mayoll and Molinari that drove them so far below the surface, as well as Mayoll's uncanny affinity for dolphins and incompatibility with normal human relationships, made this an incredibly captivating film for me. As a friend put it, anybody who can make a movie about holding your breath interesting has some talent. The Big Blue has a noticeably happier American edit, which Besson apparently hated but I actually really enjoy, while the director's cut adds an hour that changes the entire meaning of a lot of the film, making it a lot deeper and more sorrowful, but incredibly moving. Seriously, you people who keep accusing me of not watching enough romantic films because I don't watch a lot of Drew Barrymore romcoms, watch this movie and then shut up.
4. Nikita
Also known for commercial reasons related to its release date as La Femme Nikita, this is possibly my favorite spy movie of all time. The absolutely bad-ass Nikita, excruciatingly sexy, impulsive, and incredibly dangerous, sets the standard for the Sydney Bristows of the world. She begins the story as a drug addict sentenced to death for the murder of a police officer in a poorly conceived robbery attempt, forcibly recruited to work for the French government as an assassin. What I love about Nikita is usually a woman in a spy film has to be some boring, unquestionable paragon, and Nikita is instead a person capable of the most horrific violence that the state found unfit to continue to live. She's not a hooker with a heart of gold either, and her traumatic emotional state prevents her from making normal emotional connections to other human beings, or from dropping right into a normal cover life. The gritty, need-to-know existence of a spy, her violent past, and the difficulty of opening up to somebody who loves her enough to suffer her strange behavior all combines into an impossible situation. This is all tied up in a wild ride full of gun battles, betrayal, emergency corpse disposal, and a brief but memorable appearance by Jean Reno as Victor, the Cleaner.
5. Leon
Like Nikita, this film got its title changed for an American release, to The Professional. This breaks up the symmetry between the two films, which are both about assassins. Inspired by Jean Reno's cameo as the cleaner in Nikita, this is a movie about what the ghostly, inhumanly efficient hit man does when he's off the clock. In the case of Leon, he goes home and drinks a big glass of milk before going to bed. Leon has no purpose, no real life, beyond the people who exploit his remarkable ability to kill, and no passion besides slipping off to showings of old black and white movies. When his neighbor's entire family is brutally murdered by a insane Mozart afficionado and drug lord played with considerable relish by Gary Oldman, Leon allows his neighbor's 12-year old daughter Mathilda sanctuary in his apartment (Nathalie Portman in her first and best acting job). The bond between Leon and Mathilda grows as she teaches him what she knows, how to read, and he teaches her about the world of contract killings. Nikita and Leon are a great pair of films, fascinating and resonant in their characters, but great rides because of the ridiculous and fun Luc Besson action movie style.
6. The 5th Element
This is definitely a movie where I don't care what the rest of you all say, I love every frame of it. The futuristic New York with such own flamboyant and alien sense of style is great all by itself, an even more vertical Manhattan where Bruce Willis can order sushi from a guy on a blimp who pulls up to his window. The speculation on the evolution of fashion is amusing, showcased in Jean-Paul Gaultier's personal design of several hundred costumes for extras. Chris Tucker is perfect as the MTV VJ of the future, with several hundred years to become more ridiculous and self-absorbed, and this is also the film that began my infatuation with Mila Jovovich. Often I see comic-book movies that take the unique visual artistry of the comic and squash it into something much more drab and mundane that looks like any other movie, and this is in a way what they all should have been aiming for, a movie where everybody looks like they just stepped off the page
in bright colors and impossible outfits, especially Gary Oldman as a fantastically evil comic book villain. I thought Eric Serra's score for this film and Nikita were his best, especially the alien opera that no human singer could reproduce.
7. The Messenger
Er, I guess they can't all be perfect. I did like Mila Jovovich as Joan of Arc, if for no other reason than Jeanne's possibly schizophrenic, possibly divine dialogues with a phantasmal Dustin Hoffman. Appearing to Jeanne as amongst other things Jesus and the Devil, he questions her divine inspiration, and offers mundane explanations for every sign she receives from God. That element was at least interesting.
8-10. Angel-A, Arthur et les Minimoys, Atlantis
I have not seen these, so I'm going to be a complete fanboy and assume they're all great films. So there.
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