Key dates: [1980-1991]
The 1980s culture changed a lot. Video games, fashion, adverts and music videos became very important in 1980s and early 90s pop culture. Even with government support to help boost France’s film industry, filmmakers still had to work their way up on heavily stylized and colourful music videos and adverts. Three young stylised French directors made films which critics began calling a movement of cinema du look.
Style was used to make the films look good. Most films were very colourful just as the current adverts or music videos were. Where as movements before were focused on story, these filmmakers wanted to make their films look cool and their charters at times looked like pop stars. Modern pop culture was interweaved and dramatic looks were abandoned.
Major Figures:
Jean-Jacques Beineix
Luc Besson
Leos Carax
Notable films:
“Betty Blue” (1986 dir. Jean-Jacques Beineix)
“Les Amants du Pont-Neuf” (1991 dir. Leos Carax)
“Leon: The Professional” (1994 dir. Luc Besson)
“La Femme Nikta” (1990 dir. Luc Besson)
The words cinema du look can be used for films today. Bright looking films have seemed to not only have great posters and trailers but also out sell story driven dramas however Star treks lens flares is not where cinema du look lives on. Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” (1989) is a good example.
It’s possible that it was either influenced by the on going movement or took similar inspirations for style. “Do the Right Thing”, then influenced later films in the movement like Leos Carax’s Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (1991). Luc Besson continues to make films and continues to create wonderful ascetics.
“I think we have the wrong notion of commercial and intellectual or artistic film. Because all films are commercial.” – Luc Bensson
I've chosen to do a film analysis of Leon: The Professional
Director: Luc Besson
Producer: Patrice Ledoux
Cinematographer: Thierry Arbogast
Synoopsis Of Lean The Professional
Mathilda (Natalie Portman) is only 12 years old, but is already familiar with the dark side of life: her abusive father stores drugs for corrupt police officers, and her mother neglects her. Léon (Jean Reno), who lives down the hall, tends to his houseplants and works as a hired hitman for mobster Tony (Danny Aiello). When her family is murdered by crooked DEA agent Stansfield (Gary Oldman), Mathilda joins forces with a reluctant Léon to learn his deadly trade and avenge her family's deaths.
HOW ARE SEXUALITY AND MATURITY CONCEPTS PRESENTED BETWEEN THE CHARACTERS?
The film was a controversial film at the time of its release. American audiences responded poorly to many of the scenes between Léon (Jean Reno) and Mathilda (Natalie Portman), so much that the film was edited down by almost a half hour and re-titled for American theatres.
In the original cut of the film, the relationship between Léon and Mathilda is more complicated. Léon spends more time teaching Mathilda the intricacies of being an assassin. Mathilda tries to seduce him, saying she’s in love with him. She gets drunk at a restaurant. And while Léon never shows a sexual interest in Mathilda, some viewers can’t help but see the relationship as pedophilic or, at least, socially inappropriate. Though Léon never responds positively to Mathilda’s questionable behavior in either version, the material opens itself up to that sort of interpretation.
Director Luc Besson didn’t intend for anyone to think Léon had a sexual interest in Mathilda. She tries to seduce him and thinks she’s in love with him, but it’s important to remember she’s a child. She doesn’t know what her emotions mean - she’s merely in a situation where she’s finally allowed to have them. Her family life was terrible, she witnessed her family’s murder, and Léon is the first person who genuinely cared for her. He’s a paternal figure, a protector, and the only man in Mathilda’s life. The only person she ever truly cared about was her little brother, who was murdered with the rest of her family. She transfers her love for him, and her longing for the father she never had, onto Léon. She’s 12 years old and on the edge of puberty - it’s completely reasonable for her to not know how to handle all these various emotions.
Léon himself is a bit of a child in the ways that Mathilda isn’t. He drinks milk a lot and can’t read. Aside from being an assassin, he’s very reserved, naive, and disconnected. His feelings toward Mathilda awaken an appreciation for life and show there’s a reason for him to exist. But he never responds with even the slightest glimmer of interest in her emotional advances. He loves her, but not romantically. Jean Reno does an excellent job conveying his discomfort every time Mathilda attempts to act beyond her age or understanding. He’s an assassin, and could easily be an immoral character more than willing to take advantage of a 12 year-old throwing herself at him, but he does the exact opposite. If anything, the film should be interpreted as anti-pedophilic. Even a guy who is fine with killing a room full of people isn’t low enough to touch a 12 year-old.
FILMMAKERS INTENTIONS & INSPIRATIONS:
A stylish and eccentric thriller that feels thoroughly French despite the English-speaking cast and the New York setting, with Natalie Portman in what surely must be one of the most memorable child performances of all time.
Written and directed by Luc Besson, Leon follows the eponymous assassin, played by Jean Reno, who displays his ruthless professional brilliance in the brutal opening scene. When he’s off work, Leon is a quiet loner who can’t read or write, enjoys a glass of milk and Gene Kelly films, carefully tends his house plant, and sleeps upright in his chair. He has no qualms about his occupation, but draws the line at taking jobs involving women or children.
One day, rather than causing some bloody mayhem, Leon becomes a witness to one, when a corrupt and sadistic DEA agent (Gary Oldman in an outrageously hammy mode) and his minions massacre a family living next door over missing drugs. The only survivor is 12-year-old Mathilda (Natalie Portman), who Leon hesitantly takes in. Against all of his better judgment, Leon lets Mathilda stay, and, at the insistence of his precocious charge who thirsts for revenge, teaches her the violent skills of his trade.
The film is packed with style and visual flair, and Oldman’s unhinged turn as the Beethoven-loving piece of work is very entertaining. But the movie belongs to Reno and Portman, who are both exceptional, and the fascinating dynamic between Leon and Mathilda. A story about an independent loner who suddenly has the responsibilities of a father figure thrust upon him is nothing new, but Besson’s movie puts a rather unconventional spin on it. For one thing, such story doesn’t often involve the said surrogate father teaching a 12-year-old girl how to shoot joggers in the Central Park from the roof of a building.
In a different movie, Mathilda and Leon would have been the two damaged people who find stability and happiness in each other that was missing in their lives, but Leon upends that notion by portraying the relationship in a far more dysfunctional way, while still keeping the touching and affecting side of it. While Leon is weirdly childlike and awkward for his age, Mathilda constantly tries to hide her naivety and seem worldlier and more mature than she really is. Struggling to deal with her trauma, she develops an uncomfortable crush on Leon that neither of them are emotionally equipped to deal with. The film makes it clear that Leon has no intention of reciprocating, but these Lolita-esque vibes would surely have resulted in a massive social media backlash had the movie been released today.
With its mix of sweet and twisted, mainstream thriller and French art house, explosive action and intimate storytelling, Leon is a thrilling piece of cinema. It’s something of a pity to think that it would be a while before Portman got a role as good or as complex as her debut.
WHY DO THEY DRINK SO MUCH MILK?
The two characters Leon and Mathilda later on drinks milk two quarts everyday. The director has chosen it to be the beverage that introduces the hitman as a sweet, lactose loving men within the first few minutes.
The milk is visually ironic. Leon is a professional hitman. He is big, strong person who sticks with his routine and schedule. He is master of disappearing in and out of a location to assassinate a dozen of Men without being seen. And after his job he goes back to his apartment to drink a glass of milk. Which is so non expected, which adds a layer of complexity to his persona.
Metaphorically, it's a symbol of wholesomeness and his paternal concern for Mathilda. He attempts to enrich her and provide her with a more wholesome environment, and milk represents those qualities. It's a fluid of life, nature, and care.
Additionally, it's a fluid of innocence and in the case of both Leon and Mathilda's childhood. Leon represents childhood in ways that Mathilda doesn't, he does not know how to read, he finds great pleasure in simple entertainment, he has no apparent sexual desires or relationships. He is, on many levels, more immature than Mathilda. As she though a child, is intellectually superior to Leon, dresses beyond her years, and is raised in an environment that exposed her to many things children shouldn't have to deal with.
Director Luc Besson puts a lot pf emphasis on the relationship between Leon and Mathilda, focusing on the contrasts between gender, size, physical strengths, intellectual strength, assertiveness, confidence, and knowledge. The milk is the most important message towards the movie, which represents a metaphor that helps build those comparisons between its two main characters/protagonists.
websites helps:
https://yggdrasille.com/2020/08/06/leon-the-professional-film-review/
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/remembering-leon-professional-just-perfectly-balanced-movie-a6731866.html
https://the-take.com/read/how-was-natalie-portman-discovered-and-cast-in-leon-the-professional-at-such-a-young-age
https://the-take.com/read/in-leon-the-professional-why-do-they-drink-so-much-milk
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