Valerian And The City of a Thousand Planets

Luc Besson is a smart director whose lavish style has been connected with a handful of films, some of which are well-loved (Leon, Nikita), and one specifically is little-known (The Big Blue). In 1997 the posters for The Fifth Element were everywhere, and it was the first film that I saw in the cinema which went on to enjoy ‘cult’ success. It was by no means a successful film at the time, but now it’s been recognised as being a classic. Besson had been working on the story since he was a teenager, and as a teen he was inspired by a French comic book, and finally he has made an adaptation of the comic book. And this is it.

And Oh My God! The mad Luc Besson sci-fi world is presented before the bewildered eyes of all those who go to see this! Maybe my love for The Fifth Element changes the way I look at this film, but you’ve got to hope that it will go out of the cinema and into the world and into the hearts of people who love an audacious and mad visual spectacle that happens to have a role for Barbados’s most famous gal Rhianna. The story doesn’t really matter, but it’s about Earth’s relationship with aliens: a montage at the beginning shows a series of aliens from the near future to the further future, shaking hands with humans in a space station—the station eventually moves from Earth orbit and goes on a mission of exploration. The story is about a conflict with a peace-loving alien race who are beautifully visualised in an exquisite paradise world which is besieged and attacked by an evil military man.

Sent to resolve a problem are Major Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Sergeant Laureline (Cara Delevigne). Valerian is supposedly a hot-shot but his flirting banter with Laureline is rebuffed by her in a way that pretty much signposts what is going on. The duo travel a magnificently inventive universe and meet a massive number of aliens (there are apparently over six hundred species), including a shape-shifting Night Club performer (Rhianna)—whose performance is like the mucky dream of a teenage boy. However there is more to this character than just the ability to become a sexy nurse with an ill-fitting blouse, and her appearance saves the movie by slowing it down and giving it some emotional depth.

Because Valerian is annoying. The Fifth Element's script might have been poor (though I don’t remember thinking that) but it was sold by top-class performances, and ironically the role of Ruby Rhod—exuberantly played by Chris Tucker—was one thing that people got used to because basically society caught up with his acting choice. Rhianna is in that role, although it’s not a defining role in this case. The problem with the script here is that the actors have problems performing it with any sort of commitment. This is less true of Delevigne, who I liked immediately, than it is for Dane DaHaan who does nothing with his lines—cocky military flyboy cliché to the last—delivering them without any style. He undersells his title role in a spectacular fashion, a performance that would kill the movie were it not for the visual box of toys that Besson creates. The story has the simplicity that a lot of people will not take to, but it looks amazing. There’s “humanity”—an unusual word in this context—in the aliens, and humour in a specific trio of aliens, but the rest of it is thin. DaHaan is the problem with the film because he makes you emerge from the cinema thinking that you’d actually go and see Bruce Willis in Hamlet if he’d put on his white vest and have a go. DaHaan is like a bad Keanu Reeves impersonation, and Keanu did do Hamlet.

I wanted to love it. I wanted to proclaim a cult hit, but I don’t know. The film is maddening in the outset because it seems not to deliver on its promise. The simplistic story grates a bit but I have to say that ultimately, on reflection, I give in to my own wish and announce that I do indeed love it. It may be like Babylon 5 in the form of an energy drink consumed by a teenage boy with big aspirations. It takes a committed or brilliant performer to do things with the words of a director who’s more concerned with the visual, and so the result is this mad crazy spectacle.