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.
Other movies
NIGHTTIME SOUNDS
Director: Zhang Zhongchen
Nighttime Sounds blends social realism with surrealist poetry to explore the emotional landscapes of women in rural China: their buried desires and muted cries for freedom, love and recognition. Eight-year-old Qing lives with her mother, while her father works in a distant city. One morning, Qing encounters a ghostly child searching for their missing mother. Through dreamlike imagery and a haunting soundscape, director Zhang Zhongchen weaves a powerful tale of memory, longing and the silence passed from one generation of women to the next.
THE SECRET AGENT
Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho
Fasten your seatbelts: Brazil is in the throes of a military dictatorship and left-leaning academic Marcelo (Wagner Moura) is on the run and headed to Recife with his young son. Once there, he has to get his papers — and best the rogue’s gallery of characters and scenarios strewn in his path by director Kleber Mendonça Filho. Set in 1977, The Secret Agent is full of surprises, cycling between B movie set pieces, some pointed satire and duelling timelines and perspectives. It is a sharp political drama that delivers an entertaining and suspenseful ride, which won best actor and best director at Cannes this year for Moura and Filho respectively. It is also Brazil’s submission to the US Academy Awards.