Vivid visuals make space-cop drama dazzle
At the age of 10, Luc Besson fell in love with the French-Belgian space opera comic "Valerian and Laureline," by writer Pierre Christin and artist JeanClaude Mezieres.
Chronicling the wild adventures of two sassy space cops, "Valerian and Laureline" is said to have influenced “Star Wars” and, of course, Besson’s 1997 science-fiction classic "The Fifth Element."
Now, the French film director's cinematic adaptation of his beloved childhood comic, "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets," hits theaters in all its glorious spectacle.
Besson has created an intoxicating, visually enchanting world in "Valerian" — one that's richly and imaginatively rendered, deeply textured and almost overwhelming. The film drops viewers into an outerspace world that knows no limits on space, time and dimensionality, and asks the Luc Besson.
PG-13 (for sci-fi violence and action, suggestive material and brief language) 2:17 at the Columbus 10 at Westpointe, Crosswoods, Dublin Village 18, Easton 30, Georgesville Square 16, Grove City 14, Lennox 24, Movies 16 Gahanna, Pickerington, Polaris 18, River Valley and the Screens at the Continent theaters and the South Drive-in.
viewer to go along for this deeply weird roller coaster ride.
Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne star as Valerian and Laureline, a couple of federal space agents — a combination of FBI, undercover cops and Secret Service. They’re tasked with securing a rare converter being sold on the black market, but the seemingly simple mission leads to a governmental conspiracy to cover up the genocide of the peaceful Mul people 30 years earlier.
The surviving Mul people, staging their own small resistance, are like the Na’vi from "Avatar," not only in bearing — the Mul look like tall, thin pearlescent Masai warriors — but in the way they coexist in peaceful equality with their environment. Fighting for their existence is the noblest of causes.
While the duo chase down leads, and escape from tricky pickles, Valerian makes an attempt to woo Laureline, asking her to marry him over and over again.
The film is set in the 28th century in space, where people do their shopping in another dimension and jellyfish have psychic innards. In a world seemingly so rife with possibilities, why force their romance into a tradition that seems rather meaningless in this environment?
The proposal might seem forced and awkward because there's little tangible chemistry between DeHaan and Delevingne. DeHaan feels miscast, not the rakish playboy charmer as this film tries to present him. He fades back over the course of the film, as Delevingne comes to the forefront, with a magnetic screen presence established through the sheer force of her eyes.
It’s a shame that her character’s name isn't part of the film title, a la the comic, as Laureline is every inch the hero as Valerian.
The message of "Valerian" is deeply hopeful and humane — one focused on the power of love and trust and procedure and protocol.
It’s a movie about dissolving the limits of space and dimensionality in order to create a harmonious existence for all living creatures, and that extends to hierarchical power structures as well.
Despite Valerian and Laureline’s hollow romantic relationship — and moments when the film loses the story thread and sense of geography altogether — viewers will surely be swept away by Besson’s stunning world.
The director's beating heart drives the moral of the story home.