...by Luc Besson is a film built on the cartoons (Bande-dessinée) by Jacques Tardi (not Tati!).
It's a series of cartoons where the main title is 'Les aventures....' or 'The extraordinary adventures of...' completed with subtitles ('Adèle et la bête'; 'Le demon de la Tour Eiffel' etc.).
I (Gunnar) haven't read the cartoons and neither have Aurore. However she knew about their existence - I didn't.
These cartoons about Adèle, was written between 1976 and 2007.
Adèle is somewhat more robust physically in the BD:s compared to the actress Louise Bourgoin, something Tardi had mentioned when also stating that Bourgoin was prettier than his heroine.
Adèle is an adventurous woman, having her opposite among men in Indiana Jones.
She is a novellist but goes on to become an investigative journalist being somewhat of an expert in archeology and many other specialities, to some extent a unversal genius.
The reason for her to become an investigative journalist is that she, through her adventures, stumbles over mysterious events, including corruption and other 'anomalies' and thus she becomes eager to reveal the truth.
In this case she is looking for a remedy for her sister who is dead! Brain-dead anyway.
In the middle of the film we get to know that her death was caused by an accident on the tennis court when the two sisters played against each other. Her sister fell on a hair pin that penetrated her brain.
Adèle takes on the responsibility for this accident and subsequently does everything she possibly can, in order to save her sister.
The 'remedy' is a mummy who is said to have been the doctor of one of the most influential pharaohs and she sets off to find this mummy and bring it back to Paris where she knows of a specialist who might be able bringing the mummy to live.
Of course she encounters different adventures and not least Dieuleveult (Mathieu Amalric), an egyptian who tries to stop her from taking the mummy, including trying to kill her.
Before this film was made, Tardi was sceptical in letting someone adapt his BD:s for the screen but obviously he accepted Besson as the latter himself is a great fan of BD and furthermore Tardi seemed to like the œuvres of Besson, whereby it became a film after all.
The story takes place in the Paris of the 1920's and not least in the Louvre and other museums.
One decade earlier La Gioconda was stolen by an Italian employee at the Louvre, because he thought that it belonged to Italy, not France. He kept it in his appartment for two years, before it was discovered.
In this film a mummy (in Egypt) and a bird (at the Natural Historic Museum) are stolen (or rather escapes in the case of the bird), the bird being a terradactyl (pterodactylus), both dead since long but as Adèle once say in the film: "Death is the only path to birth".
We found the film being very charming containing both humour and trails of 'classic'adventure-films but I can't say it was an extraordinary experience.
The jokes about mummies who scare people when appearing in public (asking for the way to a museum) felt somewhat dated.
On the other hand there was a scene in which Adèle tries to get access to the professor when he has been imprisoned, sentenced to death, and that one is quite amusing. She uses different disguises but is again and again exposed.
The characters we get to meet (the Egyptian, the professor, the polices and not least the mummimes) were however rather 'special'.
I wonder though if not the characters in the books are even more specific.
The masks and make up was extremely well done and Mathieu Amalric was totally unrecoginzable.
The special effects were not impressive but on the other hand, today one expect more and more when it comes to this technical side. However I'm seldom impressed by the technical achievements in films and it's far from the most interesting part of a film.
We'll see if there will be more films made about Adèle and her adventures. I wouldn' mind, even though I'm not overwhelmed by this first (and last?) one.
It's a series of cartoons where the main title is 'Les aventures....' or 'The extraordinary adventures of...' completed with subtitles ('Adèle et la bête'; 'Le demon de la Tour Eiffel' etc.).
I (Gunnar) haven't read the cartoons and neither have Aurore. However she knew about their existence - I didn't.
These cartoons about Adèle, was written between 1976 and 2007.
Adèle is somewhat more robust physically in the BD:s compared to the actress Louise Bourgoin, something Tardi had mentioned when also stating that Bourgoin was prettier than his heroine.
Adèle is an adventurous woman, having her opposite among men in Indiana Jones.
She is a novellist but goes on to become an investigative journalist being somewhat of an expert in archeology and many other specialities, to some extent a unversal genius.
The reason for her to become an investigative journalist is that she, through her adventures, stumbles over mysterious events, including corruption and other 'anomalies' and thus she becomes eager to reveal the truth.
In this case she is looking for a remedy for her sister who is dead! Brain-dead anyway.
In the middle of the film we get to know that her death was caused by an accident on the tennis court when the two sisters played against each other. Her sister fell on a hair pin that penetrated her brain.
Adèle takes on the responsibility for this accident and subsequently does everything she possibly can, in order to save her sister.
The 'remedy' is a mummy who is said to have been the doctor of one of the most influential pharaohs and she sets off to find this mummy and bring it back to Paris where she knows of a specialist who might be able bringing the mummy to live.
Of course she encounters different adventures and not least Dieuleveult (Mathieu Amalric), an egyptian who tries to stop her from taking the mummy, including trying to kill her.
Before this film was made, Tardi was sceptical in letting someone adapt his BD:s for the screen but obviously he accepted Besson as the latter himself is a great fan of BD and furthermore Tardi seemed to like the œuvres of Besson, whereby it became a film after all.
The story takes place in the Paris of the 1920's and not least in the Louvre and other museums.
One decade earlier La Gioconda was stolen by an Italian employee at the Louvre, because he thought that it belonged to Italy, not France. He kept it in his appartment for two years, before it was discovered.
In this film a mummy (in Egypt) and a bird (at the Natural Historic Museum) are stolen (or rather escapes in the case of the bird), the bird being a terradactyl (pterodactylus), both dead since long but as Adèle once say in the film: "Death is the only path to birth".
We found the film being very charming containing both humour and trails of 'classic'adventure-films but I can't say it was an extraordinary experience.
The jokes about mummies who scare people when appearing in public (asking for the way to a museum) felt somewhat dated.
On the other hand there was a scene in which Adèle tries to get access to the professor when he has been imprisoned, sentenced to death, and that one is quite amusing. She uses different disguises but is again and again exposed.
The characters we get to meet (the Egyptian, the professor, the polices and not least the mummimes) were however rather 'special'.
I wonder though if not the characters in the books are even more specific.
The masks and make up was extremely well done and Mathieu Amalric was totally unrecoginzable.
The special effects were not impressive but on the other hand, today one expect more and more when it comes to this technical side. However I'm seldom impressed by the technical achievements in films and it's far from the most interesting part of a film.
We'll see if there will be more films made about Adèle and her adventures. I wouldn' mind, even though I'm not overwhelmed by this first (and last?) one.
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