 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
Léon: The Professional
|
 |
|
Every
film by Luc Besson (including Nikita [1990] and The Big Blue [1988]) is
like a violent, hyperreal fairy tale, full of love and death, angels and devils,
and extravagant dreams of escaping this world. There’s something off-the-ground
about Besson’s work – a feeling that we’re watching a postmodern comic strip,
located somewhere between parody and hysteria.
Léon: The
Professional is Besson’s brave attempt at making a French film for
the American market – and , unlikely as it seems, its pervasive air of
trans-national oddness actually enhances its power. I have always admired
Sergio Leone’s work – the so-called spaghetti Westerns from the 1960s. Leone’s
project was decidedly odd – to make dubbed Westerns for the American market,
often shot in vaguely desert landscapes wherever on the globe that they could
be found. The director’s genius was to turn this pervasive oddness into a
style, his style – founded on
gravelly voices close to the microphone, astonishing visual abstractions of
place and space, and the remarkably bold music of Ennio Morricone (the subject
of a good joke in Nanni Moretti’s Caro diario [1994]). Léon: The Professional adopts and adapts Leone’s style.
Léon
(Jean Reno) – he loses the accent in his name when the film plays in
English-speaking regions – is a supposedly Italian “cleaner” (hit man) working
for a Mafia boss (Danny Aiello) in New York. Léon is a little like the lone,
steely, ever-vigilant hero of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï (1967) – keeping
himself fit, maintaining ordered rituals, sleeping upright in a chair “with one
eye open”. I guess I would, too, if I were Léon.
His
life is disturbed when, one ugly day, a gang of crooked cops led by the
psychotic Norman (Gary Oldman) wipes out the family in a neighbouring flat.
Leon reluctantly saves the life of punky young Mathilda (Natalie Portman) and
then, even more reluctantly, has to look after her. Cinephiles will recognise, in
their strange, platonic relationship, Besson’s extended tribute to John
Cassavetes’ masterpiece, Gloria (1980).
I
am fascinated at the ways critics and viewers describe this relationship
between Léon and Mathilda. Some accuse the film of being a disgusting
paedophile, Lolita fantasy – even though there is no sex and, indeed, very few
erotic references of any kind in its story. Others see it as a tender, familial
thing: Leon learning to become a father for the first time in his life. Both of
these black-and-white interpretations were already mulched and spat out by Gloria. Cassavetes’ film, which also
starts with the annihilation of a family mixed up with the underworld, is about
the relationship between an adult, loner woman, and a small, irritating boy.
The
whole point of Cassavetes’ fable is that these two characters reach a kind of
love which is neither sexual nor familial. It is a free, unique kind of love
beyond such social definitions, one formed in the crucible of shared,
life-threatening experiences. Léon: The
Professional isn’t anywhere as touching as Gloria, but it’s certainly got the same intention.
In
some ways, there is not much to Léon: The
Professional. The characters are broadly sketched, and the pathos of their
destinies crudely dramatised. As in the films of Leos Carax (Les Amants du
Pont-Neuf, 1991), the narrative
lurches forward fitfully, sometimes in a disconcertingly hallucinatory and
improbable way. That bumpiness can be justified as part and parcel of the whole
comic strip mode of the project. But it’s harder to take Besson’s attempts at
heartwarming, Chaplinesque comic interludes; they’re just awful.
On
the sheer level of cinematic craft, Léon:
The Professional unquestionably shows Besson at the top of his game. Its
visual style can only be appreciated on a big, wide screen: extreme close-ups
of faces set in vast, minimalist expanses, punctuated by sudden, disorienting
camera moves. Beyond Melville and Cassavetes, Besson has clearly been studying
the movies of action maestro John Woo (Hard Boiled,
1992). The violent set-pieces here are tense, intricate and explosive.
As
pure spectacle, Léon: The Professional is riveting. Eric Serra’s captivating score alternates between clanking, industrial
rhythms and lush, Morricone-style strings, with a few warblings from Björk and
Sting thrown in for good measure. And Oldman – whether raving about Beethoven
or popping brightly coloured pills before each savage act he commits – is
outlandishly mesmerising.
Update:
Note that, beyond the proliferation of alternative titles for this film, there
are also two separate cuts available: the original, which Besson refers to the “director’s
cut” and is the the one reviewed here, and a “long version” containing a
further 25 minutes of material. When Besson was blocked by Gaumont from
realising his scripted sequel Mathilda,
to star a grown-up Portman, he reportedly adapted it with director Olivier
Megaton into the rousing Colombiana (2011)
featuring Zoe Saldana, which I also recommend.
MORE Besson: Joan of Arc, Taxi, Transporter 2, Unleashed, The Fifth Element © Adrian Martin May 1995 |
