THE BIG BLUE / LE GRAND BLEU (1988) - Movie Review

Director: Luc Besson
Starring: Jean-Marc Barr, Rosanna Arquette, Jean Reno, Paul Shenar, Sergio Castellitto, Marc Duret, Griffin Dunne
Genre: Adventure, Drama, Sport
Writer: Luc Besson, Robert Garland, Marilyn Goldin, Jacques Mayol, Marc Perrier
Runtime: 168 min
Rated: PG
Buy This Movie: Blu-ray, DVD

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Synopsis:

Enzo and Jacques have known each other for a long time. Their friendship started in their childhood days in the Mediterranean. They were not real friends in these days, but there was something they both loved and used to do the whole day long: diving. One day Jacques' father, who was a diver too, died in the Mediterranean sea. After that incident Enzo and Jacques lost contact. After several years, Enzo and Jacques had grown up, Johanna, a young clerk in a security office, has to go to Peru. There she meets Jacques who works for a group of scientists. He dives for some minutes into ice-cold water and the scientists monitor his physical state that is more like a dolphin's than a human's. Johanna can not believe what she sees and gets very interested in Jacques but she's unable to get acquainted with him. Some weeks later, back in her office, she notices a championship for divers that is supposed to take place in Taormina, Italy. In order to see Jacques again she makes up a story so the firm sends her to Italy for business purposes. In Taormina there is also Enzo, the reigning diving world champion. He knows that only Jacques can challenge and probably beat him. This time Johanna and Jacques get closer, but Jacques, being more a dolphin than a man, can not really commit and his rivalry with Enzo pushes both men into dangerous territory...

Review:

Luc Besson is mostly known for action films like "La Femme Nikita", "Leon" and "The Fifth Element", but there is one special movie in his resume that perhaps not a lot of people have seen. "The Big Blue" or "Le Grand Bleu" in French, is a surreal drama loosely based on the frendship and rivalry between free divers Jacques Mayol and Enzo Molinari, both setting and breaking world records as they raced to out-dive each other. Mayol helped introduce the sport of free-diving into the mainstream. During one dive in the 1980s, tests revealed that his heart beat decreased from 60 to 27 beats/min, a phenomenon only observed in whales, and dolphins, as stated by one character early in the film. However, this is not a biopic, but an intriguing fable built on these fascinating real-life personalities.

Besson's aquatic epic was a big hit in France, but not so much in the US. Since then it has become something of a cult classic. It's narratively overindulgent, but stunningly beautiful, often favoring style over substance, which was a characterstic of the "Cinéma du look" French film movement of the 1980s and 1990s. The director's cut runs 168 minutes long, and it definitely starts to drag after a while. With the right trims, it's a perfect two-hour movie. The romantic interludes between Jean-Marc Barr's Mayol and insurance agent Johana, played by Rosanna Arquette, are cute at first, but end up weighing down the movie. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of chemistry between Barr and Arquette, and the actress is great at juggling both comical bumbling and sizzling sex-appeal, but ultimately Besson aims to show that Mayol's only true love is the sea (and dolphins), and there are a lot of pointless, repetitive scenes meant to drive home that point.

The friendship/rivalry between Mayol and Molinari is balanced a little better, but still could have used a little more tweaking. The film's standout performance belongs to Jean Reno as Molinari, who towers above everyone when he's on-screen with a larger-than-life personality, but also shows impressive emotional depth when required. He's a boisterous foil to Barr's quiet, ponderous Mayol, and gives some of the film's most memorable scenes. The real Maiorca wasn't too happy with his portrayal in the movie, and because of his objections, the movie was not shown in Italy until 2002, after Mayol committed suicide by hanging himself at his villa in Elba. The relationship between these two characters in the movie is interesting and at times moving. The two men are driven by their obsessions in different ways, but in the end discover they share the same solace in the dark depths of the sea.

Many have fallen in love with the film's dream-like atmosphere, its languid pace, gorgeous cinematography both underwater and on land, and smooth relaxing synth score by Eric Serra (or Bill Conti's for the U.S. version). It's definitely a powerful sensory experience that helps drive the emotional intensity. However, for others it might not work as well because the human interactions are overblown and exaggerated, as if to highlight how strange the surface world is compared to the calmness of the Big Blue. If you'd like something non-fiction, maybe try Lefteris Charitos's 2017 documentary "Dolphin Man" ("L'Homme dauphin, sur les traces de Jacques Mayol"). In the end, even I have conflicting feelings about this movie, but I did enjoy it. It's less a movie than an experience, and everyone should try it and decide for themselves. I personally recommend the director's cut, if you can find it, because the US version's terrible extended ending ruins the ambiguous beauty of Besson's intended coda.

SCORE: 7/10