Quick… what’s the last movie Luc Besson directed? Not wrote or produced, but actually directed. If you haven’t been paying attention at all you might think it was his misguided biopic The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, and if you’re partially aware of French cinema you may have guessed his black & white ode to love and destiny Angel-A. Only if you’re really good would you have known that his last three films as director were a trilogy of live action/CGI movies for children that started with Arthur and the Invisibles in 2006 and ends this year with Arthur and the Two Worlds War.
But none of that really matters because he’s finally returned to making movies for the rest of us. (Sadly, it’s not the sequel idea to The Professional that I pitched here.)
The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec is a big budget adventure film along the lines of Indiana Jones or The Mummy. Based on a series of French comics, the film follows a female writer in early 20th-century Europe prone to action, adventure, and dangerous situations… involving mummies, evil bad guys, and a pterodactyl that hatches from a prehistoric egg and proceeds to terrorize Paris. Check out the new teaser below… it’s technically in French, but don’t we all speak the language of cinema?
What do you think? Honestly I’m pretty excited about this one. Besson knows how to fill his work with style and craft spectacular action scenes, and you can never go wrong with an attractive woman like Louise Bourgoin in the lead. Per IMDB, Mathieu Amalric is also in the film but I’ll be damned if I can spot him in the teaser. I’m guessing the “comedy” quotient will be fairly high (and I put the term in quotes because French comedy is always suspect), and probably along the lines of Besson’s The Fifth Element. There is a small sense that the title is trying to ape another popular French film (The Fabulous Destiny of Amelie Poulain), but since the comics apparently appeared in the seventies I’ll let it slide…
The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec hits European theaters on April 14th, 2010. (Thanks to Twitch for the heads up.)
