THE BIG BLUE
Genre
Adventure
Running time
137 minutes
Year
1998
Language
English, Italian and French
Subtitle
Arabic and English
Country
France
Director
Luc Besson
Bio
Producer
Cast
Rosanna Arquette, Jean-Marc Barr, Jean Reno, Paul Shenar, Sergio Castellitto
Scriptwriter
Marc Perrier, Robert Garland, Marylin Golden, Jacques Mayol, Luc Besson
Director Luc Besson plunges into the life aquatic in this ground-breaking cult film from 1988 starring Jean-Marc Barr, Jean Reno and Rosanna Arquette and inspired by real-life champion free-divers. No-limits free divers (who rely on breath-holding techniques only) Jacques Mayol (Barr) and Enzo Molinari (Reno) are childhood friends who grow up to become champion divers, brothers on land but rivals underwater. With Arquette the only landline to an increasingly unanchored Jacques, the eccentric Enzo pushes ever-deeper. With beautiful underwater sequences (which have never been matched) and Éric Serra’s languid score, this English-language film with a European-sensibility was the most popular film in France of the 1980s, playing for a year and selling almost 10 million tickets.
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