14 SEPTEMBER: LUC BESSON BLU-RAYS – UK BLU-RAY PREMIERES
Nikita / Subway / Atlantis / Le Dernier Combat / The Big Blue / Leon (Director’s Cut) / Angel-A
Luc Besson was born in Paris in 1959 but spent most of his childhood travelling around the world with his parents who were diving instructors. Besson thus originally wanted to become a marine biologist, until a diving accident forced him back to Paris and a more urbane lifestyle. Deciding to become a filmmaker instead, he made his feature length debut as a writer/producer/ director with The Last Battle in 1983. The film heralded the arrival of a new visionary in French cinema and marked the beginning of long collaborations with actor Jean Reno and composer Eric Serra, amongst others. Themes of alienation and unlikely pairings came to characterize many of Besson’s films, including Subway, Léon and Angel-A, while his passion for the beauties and mysteries of aquatic life inspired the story of The Big Blue and later documentary Atlantis. His work as a true cinema aesthete led the new French movement “cinema du look” – highly stylized and slick visuals almost mesmeric in their intensity and power.
Available here for the first time on blu-ray, the format really does justice for the first time to Besson’s unique, striking visual style.
