Plumbing the depths
Whose little vanity is this, to release the much-disparaged director's cut of the much-criticised The Big Blue in Hong Kong at a time when cinema screens are scarce and controversy raging over delayed releases and parallel importing? A whopping 188-minute version of the 1988 movie, which has all but disappeared from the video shelves due to rampant lack of interest, is a peculiar sight indeed at Broadway Cinematheque. I suspect the practice of 'packaging' - whereupon a studio, say Gaumant, tells a distributor, say Edko Films, that it can only have, say, The Fifth Element if it agrees to take an earlier, dormant work - has brought The Big Blue back to the big screen.
Perhaps not. But both movies were directed by French director Luc Besson, for the same studio, Gaumant, and both have been controversial - mainly because they cost so much money. At the time The Big Blue was made, its budget of US$12 million (about HK$92.7 million) was exorbitant for a no-name, no-plot art-house feature. Add in a nine-month shoot in international locations ranging from Greece to Peru, and The Big Blue was not just a critical disaster - it was a financial failure as well.
Released originally in a two-hour format - which is deadly enough - the 188-minute version of this English-language film has only been commercially shown in France. At 119 minutes, The Big Blue was just an irritation; now, it is like sitting in a torture chamber for three hours.
Badly - or more accurately, barely - plotted, The Big Blue was partially inspired by the life of French champion diver Jacques Mayol, who acted as technical adviser to the film and allowed his name to be used for the protagonist, played by Jean-Marc Barr.
An experienced diver based on the French Riviera, Barr has a lifelong rivalry with friend Jean Reno: they both dive deep without an aqualung.
During an assignment on a frozen lake high in the Peruvian mountains, Barr meets Rosanna Arquette - who gives a by-the-book ditzy Arquette performance as a New York insurance agent who falls quickly in love with Barr and trails after him to Taormina. There, Barr faces Reno in a diving contest.
Nothing much happens for a long while. Barr talks to dolphins, Barr and Reno dive, and Arquette's sole purpose seems to be to reassure the audience there is no funny stuff going on between the two boys. Besson's movie is exquisitely lensed through sheets of blue seas framed by white cliffs and, indeed, the first time we watch someone dive into the blackness below, The Big Blue is tremendously exciting. But the novelty wears off as the sequence is re-enacted, time after time.
The ending is arguably the worst point of the film, with a pregnant Arquette trying to hold on to her man while he decides whether or not to try for Reno's free-diving world record.
The performances are dismal, but the cardboard characterisations - screenplay is by Besson with Robert Garland - really leave the performers with little room to manoeuvre. Reno seemed at times to be acting for comic relief, but maybe I read that into his performance because I was so desperate for light entertainment. Barr was like the movie: pretty, but dumb. And Arquette - well, she was exactly what you would expect.
Besson wildly overestimated the cinematic interest of his theme in The Big Blue, but, in fairness, this mistake was made nearly a decade ago and should be forgiven in the light of Nikita or Leon.
There is no viable reason why this movie should be re-released - and longer too. It should carry a government health warning.
The Big Blue, Broadway Cinematheque
