THE COMMERCIAL FILM OF THE WEEK
VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS (2017) by Luc Besson
“Where did you get those pieces of cloth? -said Barbarella-“
In the same way as Cola Cao burns (that’s the way it is) Luc Besson is a good guy. It will be by the affordable tone, for being Parisian and, “mon dieu!”, breathing from the movies of blows and various explosions or the mere fact of having been able to find the hole to put the head in and, incidentally, a few bills for Yamakasis and Taxis with license plate of Marseille able to bring you to the place where live his mental ramblings. The case is that (spoiler alert) the man who was able to turn Scarlett Johansson into a pen drive has returned with the manners of the futuristic opera to prepare us a “Valerian” with a taste to “Fifth Element”.
In this way, “Valerian” was born of the lubricious love, initiatic by the director by the comic graphic serial of Jean-Claude Mezières “Valerian and Laureline” (the thing of lubricious appertain, rather, to the fifty percent of the comic title). Imagine Luc, all full of wisdom, of course, on the way to the newsstand, eager to buy the “pile” and devour the adventures of this couple of detectives “hippiespatials” with all sci-fi flavor of the sixties, (namely intergalactic free love) like for example: “Barbarella” by Jean-Claude Forest, planetary conception passed by the LSD filter of the moment (there was no instagram) and with scientific pretension “minus one”. The same love that we deduce to repair in a Besson, totally high of “enfant”, with his comic loaded with “acid from outer space”, is perceived in each and every one of the shots of his work.
“Valerian” is a time machine capable of bringing us that piece of cake lost in the amphetamine oasis of the moment. It doesn’t bring us “Ultimatums”, nor “Harryhausian” monsters with a Russian accent. No cinema of bombs. Laureline speaks the libertine language of Marie Windsor in “Cat-Women of the moon”, shares the dressing room of the ship with the tiger print of Jane Fonda. And although, yes, the political reading is clear (that is, national socialism leaves Navis Jews wandering the desert of the stars in search of their promised land) here, as Nolan would say, the first thing is love.
Traducido por: Eduardo Llorente.
Our rating: (3/5)
