This is a small-budget film written and directed and by former cinema wunderkind, Luc Besson, who is now 66 years old. (How can that be?) It was shot on a smart phone, and was supposedly filmed guerilla-style, without permits, during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns in L.A.
Why is the former hot-shot working on minor efforts like this? Besson has fallen from grace in the industry for two reasons. First, he faced a rape accusation in 2018 from an actress who worked in Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Second, Valerian (2017) and Anna (2019) lost money.
The story of John, a man who leads an ordinary life with a monotonous routine. His existence flows away dull, and he himself makes no effort to change anything; on the contrary, he does everything to continue being an ordinary man. One day John runs into a woman on the subway who is as beautiful as she is mysterious. His encounter with her finally leads him to have a goal in his bumptious life: to love June to the end of his days and at any cost.
Because one of you is bound to raise the question, I’ll note here that I think the author of that quotation misused “bumptious.” Or maybe I misunderstand what he’s trying to say.
Back to the point:
Matilda resembles a blue-eyed version of Anne Hathaway.
One, she is stunning!
Two, we all know that the fall from grace was 99.9% due to the money and 0.1% other (*maybe* including the rape accusation)
Yup. Deep Throat was wise. Always follow the money.
Re: Luc Besson’s career.
I’d argue that his last ‘good’ film he directed was 1997’s The Fifth Element. Yeah, that far back.
He seems to be an auteur who has to have a muse for things to work, if you look at any of his best work, this is most certainly the case. Lucy, Fifth Element, Leon, Dogman, La Femme Nikita, Unleashed, The Big Blue. In each of those movies the actor chosen was his muse at the time, his inspiration that elevated his work.
When he does less than stellar work, he is working off of ideas he’s inspired by from others, but it missing that muse that makes his work electric such as Arthur and the Minimoys, Valerian, Taxi.
Also, in the last 25+ years he seems to do better as a writer and producer of material and handing it off to directors better suited to create the material (Taken, The Transporter) than he would have been able to do.
I personally believe he’s past his creative peak, he might not feel that way, but the proof is in the work, there’s still some genius there, but it’s diminished. He doesn’t have it in him to do a $100M+ movie or even something like his opus The Fifth Element, those days are past him. He still can pull off very stylistic genre fare like Dogman or Dracula, but he has to play within the bounds he’s capable of to succeed. (lower budget/scope, but ideas as crazy as he wants them to be within reason)
Looking at his IMDB, he looks like he wants one more shot at the brass ring with Lucy 2, but I don’t know if he’ll be able to recapture what Scarlett and he did 11 years ago. She’s not as young and her star not as high as it was when she did that film and again, his creative spark isn’t as bright as it was 10+ years ago.
They all can’t be Scorsese, Spielberg or even Eastwood.
I think most people felt that Lucy was a good movie, and it also turned a profit.
That said, I generally agree with what you wrote.
I wonder why he didn’t direct The Transporter, one of his cool-era scripts. Do you know the story.?
No idea without looking into it, I didn’t really follow his career post 2000’s to closely.
Also, this sums up my comment about Lucy and him losing his creative spark after Fifth Element.
“I so wanted to like Anna. Really. Luc Besson is among my favorite filmmakers, despite his weaknesses as a storyteller, cultural insensitivity, and fondness for casting supermodels who can’t really act. Wait…maybe those are reasons why I like him? He’s been doing the same thing for so many years we’re stunned when he does anything different. But Anna is not different. It’s the same. The same as numerous hot chick assassin movies Besson has done in an attempt to recapture what he found with 1990’s iconic La Femme Nikita, and then momentarily rediscovered with 2014’s Lucy.”
He went back to the well again and again (with the same well trod, formulaic approach) He wrote yet another movie about a female assassin, Colombiana, that he passed on directing, yet apparently thought he had yet another story to tell.
So that reaffirms what I said about having passed his creative prime and needing to either find new outlets or just retire, but he wants to do Lucy 2 to see if he can make it work one more time, with how much time has passed, I’m not sure audiences care enough (just ask Sin City).
When he does something different and unique it works, when he does the same, sometimes it works, most of the time, people are just…indifferent.
For some reason he still thinks he needs to prove himself. If I were him, I’d be making more personal projects and not trying to recapture my youth and what made me popular and successful 25+ years ago. But I digress.
Except hemade this movie during Covid so that explains the low budget…he was one of those guys just trying to make something when production was hard. I’m not sure what actual dire business circimstances he’s in, he just made a Dracula movie that looks to have a hefty budget.
The vampire thing had a mid-level budget. I would not be surprised if he someday makes a big extravaganza again, given that he’s now clear of all charges and is fully insurable, but he’ll need outside investors because Europacorp lost money again last year and is probably close to tapped out. Snoop is co-producing the next one, but I don’t know if it’s just Snoop and EuropaCorp or if they got some money elsewhere.
For a French film it’s a huge budget…apparently the biggest budgeted French movie of the year. So he’s not on the outs, his Covid movie was just a fluke, a lot of directors made little tiny movies then. He’s never been a guy to make giant budgeted movies, except for his coupel of sci fi flicks.
Nobody has invested in him. The Chinese investors and French banks gave up after Valerian. His last few were essentially self-financed through EuropaCorp and Besson’s wife.
Anna and Valerian broke EuropaCorp’s bank, but they reorganized and secured another line of credit to allow them to make a few more films. But EuropaCorp lost money again last year, and their remaining resources are limited, so that source of financing is drying up. They have only $40 million left, with remaining debt that they still must repay. He won’t be able to count on much more EuropaCorp money unless unless (1) that Dracula film does surprisingly well in the USA and elsewhere, and thus refills the coffers at EuropaCorp; or (2) he can attract outside investors to partner with EuropaCorp.
Both are possible:
Snoop Dogg is interested in making Besson’s next movie, so that’s a start. That’s not like bringing in Disney, but it is a start.
And the Dracula movie now has a North American deal, so … who knows? Maybe. It will hinge on the distributor’s ability to market yet another Dracula film. What’s the hook?
Anyone else think the dude looks like Luigi Mangione?
Looks like his life got bumptious after he met her, if you know what I mean.
Also, the stills here remind me of the scene with Kim Greist in Brazil.