The Films of Luc Besson: Master of Spectacle (review)

Luc Besson's commercial success has often been presented as evidence of his films' lack of artisticworth. Indeed, for themore 'intellectual' strand of 1980s Frenchfilmcriticism, the fact that Besson and Jean-Jacques Beineix had worked in advertising, combined with their films' prioritization of spectacle over narrative,was proof enough of unacceptable commercial compromise. Phil Powrie's translation of Raphaël Bassan's 1989 rebuttal of that position, one of the first efforts at serious critical engagement with Besson and le cinéma du look, represents an appropriate opening, therefore, for this collection of essays on the man and his films. Rosanna Maule teases out the continuing implications of EBesson's position 'inbetween' the worlds of art and commerce focusing on the objectives, constitution and activities of his production company Europa Corp. Presenting an alternative to Hollywood, while remaining competitive with it, Maule notes that Europa's more profitable ventures allow it to finance films that would otherwise be dependent on state funding. However, as Hilary Ann Radner demonstrates in her fascinating essay on Nikita, tensions between art and commerce are not always so easily reconciled. Nikita's training as an assassin goes hand in hand with efforts to construct her as a typical consommatrice. Radner suggests that the resulting contradictions are exposed in the film's conclusion, which reveals a fundamental unease with French foreign policy in the mid 1980s. Besson's treatment of sexuality and gender is central to a number of essays here. Mark Orme's exploration of the gender implications of spatial enclosure in Subway and Nikita is engaging, though the former film's underground setting has been adequately outlined elsewhere. In their contributions, co-editors Powrie and Susan Hayward note the importance of costumeto questions of sexuality and gender, placing particular emphasis on the transgressive potential of Ruby Rhod's Gaultier designed catsuit in Le Cinquième Élément. Though the volume's subtitle confirms the director as 'master', this focus on costume suggests that Besson's production team deserves at least some of the credit for his success. This is confirmed in essays by Gérard Dastugue and Mark Brownrigg that discuss the key contribution of Eric Serra's music to Besson's films. Despite Brownrigg's use of generally unfamiliar musicological terminology, these two essays offer complementary accounts of the evolution in Serra's compositional style across Besson's oeuvre. It is unfortunate, then, that in his interrogation of the popular appeal of Le Grand Bleu, Laurent Jullier should dismiss Serra's work so lightly. Excepting the documentary feature Atlantis, the collection's eleven essays include detailed discussion of all of Besson's feature films up to and including Jeanne D'Arc. The main body of the text concludes with a short, previously unpublished interview with Besson and the volume closes with a usefully detailed filmography. Of evident interest to those working on Besson, French film and French culture more generally, the collection's focus on costume and music, oft neglected areas of film studies, should broaden its appeal considerably. As French film critics seem to have come to realize, that, in itself, is nothing to be ashamed of.