Sci-fi epic that’s a seductive triumph of visuals over plot
When the French director Luc Besson unveiled The Fifth Element in 1997, it became the definitive divisive blockbuster in as long as it took Bruce Willis to pull on his orange rubber Jean-paul Gaultier vest. But those of us with whom it struck a chord haven’t stopped reverberating since.
Besson’s crackpot science-fiction opus somehow felt both quaintly dated and nosebleed-inducingly futuristic: see Milla Jovovich’s tangerine bob and barely-there bandage bodysuit (another Gaultier number) for details. The look and feel were shaped in no small part by the concept art Besson commissioned from comic-book artist Jean-claude Mézières – think Fritz Lang’s Metropolis gone Looney Tunes.
Cinemagoers noticed elements of Star Wars and Blade Runner in the mix, but The Fifth Element’s spiritual ancestor was Valérian and Laureline, a comic strip about two spacefaring secret agents Mézières created with Pierre Christin in the Sixties. In many ways, Besson’s film was his Nineties cover version – he’d been a voracious Valérian reader since the age of eight.
All of which is to say that Besson’s 13th live-action feature – an official adaptation of Valérian and Laureline
– brings his career full circle. It’s still blockbuster fun with the lights left on: energised and tirelessly inventive.
That it roundly succeeds is down to Besson’s willingness to throw around an entire Ikea’s worth of kitchen sinks. One of the best things about Valerian is that there’s just so much of it: its ugly-beautiful crush of colours makes Guardians of the Galaxy look like
I, Daniel Blake, and while it deserves to be seen big (in crystalline dual 4K 3D if possible), it’s also built for Blu-ray binges, with the pause and frame advance buttons within thumb’s reach.
This is in evidence right from the disarming, Space Oddity-strumming prologue, in which the human inhabitants of a space station in Earth’s orbit welcome increasingly outlandish visitors aboard with the same convivial handshake. This outpost snowballs over 400-and-some years into a free-floating metropolis called Alpha – the dazzlingly realised city of the title, where an endless range of alien cultures rub along in rainbow-hued semi-harmony. Clive Owen plays the gruff commandant of the station’s governing force, and his temples are the only grey things for miles around.
But a strange cloud of radiation has bloomed close to Alpha’s core. Valerian (Dane Dehaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) are dispatched by Owen, working in an uneasy alliance with a galactic defence minister (played by the jazz pioneer Herbie Hancock, of all people) to neutralise the source. A fluorescent hedgehog plays a pivotal role, because of course it does.
Look: no one would argue that Dehaan and Delevingne are the new Bogey and Bacall, but the two are absolutely right for Besson’s purposes – they’re young, hot, archly charming, and game to crash attractively through whichever crazy surroundings the film catapults them into. Delevingne, who’s still better known as a model, is a more-than-minor revelation, particularly as her last blockbuster role, as Suicide Squad’s gyrating sorceress, was such a washout.
The dialogue can be stilted and, shall we say, a touch romantically retrograde. You could also pick a fight with the plot, but it’d be like wrestling noodles: the only thing it’s designed to do is thread together set pieces, which it does perfectly capably.
Take the sprawling mid-film detour that features Rihanna’s shape-shifting burlesque queen, Ethan Hawke’s eyeshadow-sporting pimp, neon alleys and a wonderful visual gag involving a huge lemon. It gets the story nowhere, but Valerian is a film to wallow in, not follow, and if you’re tuned to its extraterrestrial wavelength, you wouldn’t cut a second.