Film Review
There was a certain inevitability that Jacques Tardi's famous series
of comic books featuring the exploits of the fearless Adèle
Blanc-Sec (which first appeared in 1976) would one day
reach the big screen. Film director and
producer Luc Besson has long dreamed of doing just this and finally he
was able to realise his ambition, although the end result looks far
more like a debauched send-up of the Indian Jones saga than anything
that was ever conceived by Tardi.
Tardi originally conceived his tomboy heroine as an overt parody of the kind
of infallible hero that featured heavily in the serialised adventure
stories of the first decade of the 20th Century (stories which were
subsequently adapted for cinema by Louis Feuillade). Likewise,
Besson's
Les Aventures
extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec is a spirited lampoon
of the archetypal Hollywood action adventure movie, hilariously funny
in places but too obviously enamoured of the genre it parodies to be
totally effective. The feisty heroine is played by Louise Bourgoin,
a former model and television presenter who recently made
an impressive acting debut in Anne Fontaine's
La Fille de Monaco (2008).
With its totally chaotic plot, surfeit of O.T.T. special effects and
completely ludicrous characterisation, the film is extremely easy to
fault. However, as a piece of mindless entertainment which has
been slung together with scant regard for the aesthetics of cinema or
the mocking eye of the serious film critic it is pretty well
unsurpassed. Here we are reacquainted with Luc Besson's juvenile
side, not seen since his equally outlandish sci-fi spectacular
The
Fifth Element (1997).
The maddest, fastest and most wildly energetic French film of the year,
Les Aventures extraordinaires
d'Adèle Blanc-Sec is either (depending on your personal
taste) uproarious fun or a pointless cinematic abomination. In either case,
any film in which Louise Bourgoin plays a pterodactyl-fighting
action hero (in frilly corsets) is worth consideration.
© James Travers 2010
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Luc Besson film:
The Lady (2011)
Film Synopsis
In 1912, the plucky journalist Adèle Blanc-Sec undertakes an expedition
to Egypt in the hope of finding an ancient remedy for her sister, who is
close to death after injuring herself in a game of tennis. Not only
does she have to avoid the many traps laid for her by her formidable enemy
Dieuleveult, she must also grapple with some far from amiable mummies.
Adèle's extraordinary adventures continue when she returns to Paris
to find that a deadly pterodactyl is terrorising the entire city. It
seems that the prehistoric monster, a hundred and fifty million years out
of its time zone, has just hatched from a perfectly preserved egg in the
Jardin des plantes. The fearless reporter is soon lending her support
to Inspector Caponi and his assistant Justin de Saint-Hubert in a desperate
attempt to capture the terrifying airborne killer before it wreaks havoc
across the capital...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.