A Life Through Film #053: The Fifth Element
Don't multipass on watching this week's movie
Release Date: 5/9/1997
Weeks at Number One: 2
Thanks for reading! This is my ongoing series where I track the evolution of American culture in my life by reviewing every number one film at the weekend box office since I was born in chronological order. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend reading my introduction post here, and be sure to like and share the review if you enjoyed it!
Consensus on the definition of a cult film varies slightly depending on which Wikipedia article or Reddit thread you look at, but sticklers for semantics (like myself) usually agree on a few core tenets.
The prototypical cult movie needs to have a small but passionate fanbase that exists outside of the mainstream that’s drawn to some elements of the filmmaking that make it stand out from the norm. These elements can be enjoyed earnestly (such as ideas or visuals that were ahead of their time), ironically (like so-bad-they’re-good acting or writing), or somewhere in between (whatever the deal is with The Rocky Horror Picture Show). A pretty important element of a cult film is that this appreciation has to be entirely in retrospect; a movie that was a beloved big hit that maintains its appeal over time isn’t a cult classic, it’s just a classic.
In yet another instance of people not allowing words to mean specific things, however, this last principle appears to be going by the wayside. Anecdotally, I have seen some movies posited as cult hits that were commercial and critical hits upon release. I can kind of get the grey area of something like Breakdown, but when people start calling The Matrix (a future column subject) a cult hit, we’ve lost the plot a bit culturally.
We’re allowed to like movies that were popular but not significantly influential on release without thinking of them as ahead of their time, underappreciated curios. Big studio films are, at the end of the day, a commercial venture. A blockbuster coming out to mixed or poor reviews but positive box office receipts doesn’t necessarily make it worthy of later reappraisal. If people find it later and end up liking it en masse, that’s great, but it’s not necessarily a cult film finding an audience it was too early for.
Maybe we need a new term for these kinds of movies. Major films that release to success in their time and maintain a fanbase for years afterwards just aren’t cult films, no matter how off-kilter some of their filmmaking elements are.
This is of special importance to me this week because we need a word for whatever the hell The Fifth Element is.
In my research of this week’s movie, almost every source I came across referred to it as a cult film. Articles recount massive anniversary screenings filled with cosplaying fans, or interview its stars who admit that many of the people who come up to them on the street want to talk about their involvement in this specific film. The Fifth Element has maintained a small yet noticeable hold over scifi nerd culture in general since its release in 1997, but like Firefly after it, the movie has a small but mighty fanbase that could talk your ear off about multipasses and the film’s costume design for hours. You also have people who feel strongly against the movie; just last week I had a friend reach out to express her years-long, passionate hatred for The Fifth Element.
All this emotion despite the fact that The Fifth Element is a singular film entry in what feels like a larger scifi series. No sequels, no prequels, no TV adaptations, no reboots. That’s dedication.
Niche fandom and divisive quality sure makes this seem like a cult movie, but the financial statements don’t line up. The Fifth Element is hardly a small, independent production that bombed in theaters and failed to be noticed by the mainstream in its time. On release, it was the most expensive European movie ever made, which can be seen in its star-studded ensemble cast and impressive visual effects. Despite some risky storytelling decisions and mixed reviews, the film went on to be a massive financial hit, indicating acceptance by the mainstream from day 1. How did it get stuck with the cult film descriptor then?
The Fifth Element began as the daydream of a 16-year-old French boy named Luc Besson in the mid 1970s. Stuck growing up in a farmhouse with no TV or movies around him, Besson weighed his options. As he later described it, he could either become an alcoholic, kill himself, or start writing fantastical stories that transported him away from the doldrums of his everyday life.
He chose the latter option, and began to imagine himself as the driver of a flying taxi cab in a futuristic cityscape filled with aliens, giant buildings, and mysterious intrigue around every corner. Besson initially imagined utilizing this world for a novel, but struggled to find a compelling narrative hook at the center of it. Still, this strange, bright scifi world that he had imagined lingered in his brain for decades afterwards, even as he became one of the most acclaimed French directors of all time.
In 1988, Besson had a couple of French language movies under his belt and was beginning production on a third, a sea drama titled The Big Blue. Gaumont, a major studio in France, was behind that one and had high hopes for young Luc. Producers approached the director and asked if he had any other ideas that he’d like to make into a motion picture. Besson described his teenage scifi fantasy, though he still didn’t necessarily have a story to carry the world. Still, Gaumont was intrigued enough to option the project even before The Big Blue had been released, and began light pre-production work to see what could be done to adapt the director’s youthful vision.
The Big Blue ended up being Besson’s international crossover hit, at least critically. At the same time as this increased profile, he was finally figuring out what story to tell in the world he had created years prior. Inspired by the writings of Plato, Besson envisioned ancient Egyptian prophecies about an evil cosmic force that could only be defeated with a special ritual combining water, fire, air, earth, and a special fifth element: a hypothetical perfect human being.
The director began to write his vision, now titled The Fifth Element, into a script, which quickly ballooned into two scripts totaling 300 pages. I totally get this enthusiasm, by the way. Most of us have entire worlds we’ve built out in our heads for years; I can’t even imagine how exciting it would be having the financial backing to make them a reality.
While Gaumont began to figure out how the hell they could make this project a reality, Besson went back to making some of the most acclaimed films of the time. La Femme Nikita and Léon: The Professional earned the writer/director even more international attention. The latter, his first English language film, was also a decent financial success here in the States, and is held today as one of the best films of the ‘90s. Léon: The Professional is actually so well regarded that I feel actively ashamed for having never seen it. And I call myself a film buff.
All this success not only grew Besson’s fame in film circles, it made the prospect of adapting his most ambitious vision all the more appealing to Gaumont. There was a problem though: even after shrinking those 300 page scripts down into one, normal length project, the bean counters were still anticipating that The Fifth Element would cost $90 million to produce. That’s not just a decently big budget for the time (comparable to how much it cost to make Twister), it would be larger than any European film budget to date.
And yet the studio had unwavering faith in Besson and his childhood dream. Gaumont was able to secure $25 million from Sony’s Columbia Pictures in exchange for the US distribution rights, found a few grants back in France, and put the rest of the budget on the company card. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. But that Sony money came with caveats. Namely, Besson couldn’t follow through on his original plan of casting a relative unknown as the lead, Star Wars style. The Fifth Element needed to be led by a proper movie star, or else it wouldn’t be made at all.
Besson, now dedicating his full attention to this project in the wake of Léon, initially thought of Mel Gibson for the role of the main character, down on his luck veteran and flying taxi cab driver Korben Dallas. But the Braveheart star’s rate would have been a serious percentage of the budget, so he just wasn’t feasible. Sylvester Stallone expressed interest in the role, but Besson didn’t feel he was right for it, leaving the director without a clear idea of who would star as his own self-insert character.
Around this time, Besson was visiting actress Demi Moore for lunch (for some unclear reason) when her husband and Beavis and Butt-Head Do America costar Bruce Willis walked into the room. The Frenchman described The Fifth Element to the superstar, and Willis told him on the spot that he was interested.
But Luc Besson knew better than to hope; Bruce Willis was one of the most famous and in-demand actors of that time. Die Hard [4/5, not a Christmas movie] and its sequels had made him, but movies like Pulp Fiction [5/5] (and a celebrity marriage to Moore) made him ubiquitous among the A-List. If Mel Gibson was too expensive, this dude was surely off the table as well.
But I’ve got to give Bruce Willis credit. Once his film career took off in 1988, he worked his ass off basically all the time, leading to far more years than not where you could see at least two or three movies starring the actor in a given year. And he was surprisingly genre agnostic as well. Sure, he kept action movies as a primary focus, but you’d often see him doing broad comedies, intense dramas, and even a couple of those erotic thrillers that were so big back in the ‘90s.
Willis wasn’t a blind workaholic either; he was still interested in balancing jobs that paid the bills with interesting work alongside auteur directors. He took a significantly reduced rate for his part in 12 Monkeys just for the opportunity to work with Terry Gilliam. Besson was not quite so legendary a director, but Willis wasn’t too far removed from a career highlight courtesy of a young visionary named Tarantino. He knew how valuable allying himself with upstart, creative filmmakers could be. After reading the script for The Fifth Element, Willis told Besson he’d be happy to take the Dallas role.
As for his rate, meh, they’d figure something out.
With a major star set for the lead, casting the rest of The Fifth Element fell into place easily. Chris Tucker was picked over Jamie Foxx to play monstrously irritating radio host Ruby Rhod because Besson figured his skinnier frame would look better next to Willis’s musculature. Gary Oldman had worked with Besson before in Léon, and the Frenchman was producing the actor’s directorial debut, Nil By Mouth at around the same time. When the director asked Oldman if he’d like to play the villainous businessman Zorg in The Fifth Element, the actor said sure, and split his time between the two productions.
At the core of The Fifth Element is Leeloo, a genetically engineered perfect human who of course had to have been played by a young, hot actress. Besson always talks about her like she’s the protagonist of the movie but…well, we’ll get there. Over a thousand actresses tried out for the role, and though the director met hundreds of these women himself, none of them triggered his artistic spark. This was a character that Besson had fantasized about since he was 16. Any capable actress wasn’t going to be enough for him.
“You realize that whoever I cast as Leeloo,” Besson told producer Ian Smith, “I have to fall in love with them.”
Milla Jovovich was 18 when she first auditioned for the role of Leeloo, but she was already an experienced actress. You probably know her best for her minor role in Dazed and Confused [4.5/5], but Jovovich was already a Razzie Nominated actress by the time she reached adulthood, thanks to a role in 1991’s Return to the Blue Lagoon. That’s the movie where she infamously appeared nude despite the fact that she was only 15 while it was being made. Jesus Christ.
Jovovich took a break from acting after Dazed and Confused, but decided to return to it by trying out for The Fifth Element. Both she and Besson describe his personal audition process as weirdly intense. The director had her dance with no rhythm, speak in tongues, act out strange, surreal scenarios, and more. Somewhat upsettingly, all this was done in a private hotel room with no oversight. Speaking of the process later, Besson continued to lay on the creepiness:
“She was so perfect. I was so seduced by the test that she did.”
Poor boundaries continued to define their relationship while making The Fifth Element. Besson had found his Leeloo, but he didn’t want to share her. Crew members describe him as taking Jovovich under his wing, the two being the only ones fluent enough in her character’s fictional language to converse in it. The director felt the need to protect his starlet, so the two spent much of their time on set together. Everyone else on set could tell that something intense was happening, so no one was surprised when Besson and Jovovich married a few months after the release of the film.1
Filming of The Fifth Element took place from January to June of 1996, primarily at Pinebox Studios in London (last seen in the Goldeneye edition of this column). A year later, the film had its world premiere at Cannes, where it opened the iconic French festival. Normally, comedic action scifi like this wouldn’t stand a chance of being on the docket of such a prestigious film institution, but that French connection was strong. The European cinematic powers that be were eager for the synergy that would come with showing the most expensive film in the continent’s history at its most important celebration of the medium.
Like the general release a week later, this premiere of The Fifth Element at Cannes was divisive, critically. Personally, I think the problem came with expectations. That record breaking price tag, high-profile premiere, and intriguing cast grabbed mass attention, but at the end of the day this movie is still the adaptation of its director’s teenage fantasies. Ironically, if you walk into this movie expecting a life-changing cinematic experience, you’ll probably be left wanting. On the other hand, if you just watch it expecting a fun scifi romp, you’re far more likely to walk away with the movie’s exuberant fantasy lingering deep in your brain, just like it has with so many other fans over the past few decades.
I mean this in both the best and worst ways: it makes a whole lot of sense that Luc Besson came up with this world and story as a teenager. The setting of The Fifth Element is filled to bursting with inventive visuals that alternate between campy parodies predicting unfettered capitalism’s effect on the future and legitimately beautiful designs of what humanity could one day accomplish. However, the movie is also unconcerned with the finer details of this world, focusing instead on the cool stuff that makes the movie exciting. This is mostly fine for what The Fifth Element is (a delightful action romp), but unfortunately it also extends to the movie’s treatment of women.
Yeah we’re tackling the movie’s biggest problems first. I legitimately guffaw whenever I hear Besson trying to pass Leeloo off as an empowering female protagonist. As written, the character is part manic pixie dream girl, part magical macguffin with a small hint of a personality. No matter what the director says, the main character of The Fifth Element is Korben Dallas, and everyone else (Leeloo, Ruby Rhod, Zorg) is just along for the ride as part of the ensemble.
Jovovich’s character ultimately lacks agency in the narrative. She knows her own galactic importance, but she as may well be a key that can tell you which lock it opens. Useful, but hardly driving the events of the movie’s story as much as any of the prominent male characters. Like I said, she’s just along for the ride.
Unfortunately, Leeloo is the movie’s one chance at a female character. Almost every other important figure in the film is a man, and every other woman is either a background object of desire or the butt of an ugly joke. The alien diva Plavalaguna at least has some agency and importance on top of being a beautiful design; too bad she dies within ten minutes of us meeting her. As I’ll get into, sometimes the adolescent origins of The Fifth Element are to the movie’s strength. But this shockingly poor representation of women is clearly a holdover from Besson was just a horny teenager.
(If you’d like to read some extensive feminist criticism of The Fifth Element, this 2004 article by Brian Ott and Eric Aoki still packs a punch by raising a good question: what does a lack of prominent women in a technologically advanced utopia say about the world builder’s perspective on the value of women in society?)
Even by the relatively low standards of action movies in the ‘90s, The Fifth Element falls well short of bare minimum gender representation. In basically every other way, though, the movie excels at being a total blast of a scifi action comedy.
The central premise of The Fifth Element almost feels like it could come out of an old screwball comedy, if Cary Grant briefly had a phase where he wanted to explore cosmic horror. A sentient evil planet is on a collision course with Earth in an effort to wipe out all life (despite humans and other alien species occupying plenty of other celestial bodies at this point; the movie doesn’t really delve into that). Ritualistically combining four ancient elemental stones and Leeloo, the perfect human, are the only way to stop it, but multiple factions and characters want to control humanity’s salvation for myriad reasons.
The military wants to take over the entire operation by force, Ian Holm’s religious sect wants to fulfill their duty by handling everything themselves, Zorg is somehow working directly on behalf of the evil planet to stop them, and the mercenary Mangalore aliens want to use the stones to enact petty revenge on Zorg. At the center of this is Dallas, forced to help save the world when Leeloo falls into his cab and charms the pants off of him from the words “Please help.” Writing this all out makes the plot of The Fifth Element seem far more complicated than it actually is, but watching it unfold is both easy and fun.
These intertwining dynamics create plenty of opportunities to explore different narrative scenarios as the plot goes on. How will Dallas’s relationship with Leeloo evolve once she joins up with a couple of priests who know exactly what her purpose is? Does he feel more allegiance to this woman he just met, or the military he was employed by for years? What are the Mangalore willing to escalate towards to reach their goals? What is Zorg’s deal anyway?
The Fifth Element strikes an interesting comedic balance between the dry sarcasm of your average MCU movie and outright parody. You can see the slight teases of general scifi tropes even as the movie revels in the fact that it is science fiction. Besson uses the setting to run bits that, on their surface, only make sense in the 24th century, but have a connection to modern conceptions of human worth and commercialism as well. The film’s editing gets quite zany as well, though thankfully rapid cuts and farcical juxtaposition only get used in a few of the movie’s sillier moments. A good amount of people may watch this movie and find it unbearably annoying, but I vibed with it hard, especially on this most recent watch.
The ensemble is more than up to the task of making all this a blast to watch. Willis is basically just doing a small twist on John McClane, adding a bitter divorcee energy to temper Dallas’s capabilities in combat, vehicle flight, and problem solving. There’s a great extended scene in the middle of this movie where he has to deal with almost every other faction or major character in a sequence by hiding increasingly ludicrous numbers of people around his tiny apartment. It’s like an old Three Stooges bit, but it doesn’t make Dallas any less credible an ass kicker when the time comes for it later in the climax.
Her role as a protagonist may have been overblown, but Jovovich accomplishes an incredibly tough task with her performance. She needs to make the audience believe that a jaded bastard like Dallas could fall in love with her so deeply and quickly that he’s able to use that adoration to assuage her doubts at the end and give her reason to still save all that troubled, messy life. And she needs to do that without much grasp on any human language for much of the film.
She pulls it off, of course. Jovovich channels all sorts of strange, animalistic movement into Leeloo, inspired by repeated trips to the zoo to study the caged creatures on display. She’s beautiful, and deeply emotional, and you also buy her as someone who can clear a room full of hostile aliens with just her bare hands. Leeloo’s evolving fascination and disgust with the world she’s supposed to save may not be the cleanest arc in scifi history, but Jovovich still sells this angst with aplomb.
Much has been said of Chris Tucker’s performance as Ruby Rhod over the years, namely that it’s movie-ruiningly irritating. That’s all by design, though; his Prince-inspired androgyny and tacky radio personality are intentionally meant to annoy us. Maybe it’s because I've seen the movie before, but I thought Tucker’s performance was great fun, and adds needed character dynamics once the movie really gets crazy in the third act. Contrasting the cosmic stakes and intense action with the world’s obsession with pop culture and celebrity through Ruby is one of Besson’s more inspired screenwriting choices here. Plus, he was right about the fact that sticking a cowering Chris Tucker next to a badass Bruce Willis makes the latter star look like a million bucks.
As for the rest of the ensemble, Ian Holm has a bit of a disheveled Obi Wan vibe going on, which is good fun. Not the most memorable part in the movie, but important as a narrative straight man. If you’re used to Gary Oldman as the most serious actor of all time, may I please direct you to his performance as Zorg, which is caught in a haute zone somewhere between Sam Bankman-Fried and Adolf Hitler? This antagonistic performance is so distinct that I remembered him as being in a whole lot more of The Fifth Element than he is. That’s how you know you’re dealing with a scene stealer.
None of this great acting works if the setting isn’t a whole lot of fun, and The Fifth Element brushes so close to being hammy scifi that you’d be forgiven for thinking it was meant to be a parody of the Star Wars prequels. But not only does this movie predate The Phantom Menace by two years, it never loses itself in confusing visual overstimulation like Lucas’s movies. Instead, what we get is a slight twist on retro futurism; things like flying cars and space cruise ships look about like what you’d expect them to, with a few intriguing implications of the widening socioeconomic gulf that those living in this future are clearly suffering from.
Art designs are bright and memorable, adding to the overall light tone. Besson and company were inspired by European comics of the mid 20th century, and even enlisted the help of legendary French artist Moebius to help sketch out the look of The Fifth Element. Moebius later sued Gaumont and the director, actually, claiming they ripped off one of his comic books with some of the film’s elements. A judge threw out the case since, after all, the artist had been paid to help visually develop the film. That’s what you get when you’re in preproduction for 9 years I guess. To be fair, Moebius was a busy dude; how was he to remember every job he’s ever had?
He wasn’t the only high profile French artist enlisted to help with the movie. All the costuming in the movie was handled by high end fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier, and I think it’s a credit to the man’s abilities that not every outfit in the movie looks like it came off the runway. They’re all distinct and fun, fusing practicality with aesthetic design. Iconic looks like Leeloo’s early bandage bikini and Ruby Rhod’s Prince homage outfits linger on in nerd culture, but they’re hardly the only incredible looks in the film. I love the military uniforms in The Fifth Element, with their little berets and high-collar dusters, even though they or the characters that wear them are hardly important to the overall plot.
All those visual effects, from costumes, alien makeup, cityscapes, and flying cars, are done practically by the way. The production employed over 300 SFX artists in California to fill The Fifth Element with models, matte paintings, and incredible alien prosthetics. Besson claims there are only two green screen shots in the entire movie, which sounds like an insane lie. But even if the director is exaggerating a bit, it’s still impressive how much of what the actors are interacting with is clearly tangible. This physicality can only be a boon, especially when the models look this good.
Special mention must be made of Eric Serra’s original score for the movie by the way. The evolving explorations of ambient, industrial, and symphonic elements are as dynamic and offkilter as the world they soundtrack. Though not every track is a standout, I made multiple notes during my watch to go back and check out various pieces of the score, like the fun industrial dance music that plays behind Dallas in his first scene or the Egyptian inspired track behind the movie’s big car chase.
All of these visual, audio, narrative, and performative elements come together to create something so unlike anything else you’ll ever see on the big screen. Maybe part of the reason The Fifth Element is considered a cult movie is because of its certifiably singular strangeness. Our heroes are an eclectic collective of a blue collar taxi driver, a priest representing an ancient order, and a woman that no one can understand, barely interacting at all with a foe whose Texas accent is nearly as inexplicable as his hair. Alongside all this is a sentient planet, ancient Platonic philosophy, and a future just shitty and silly enough to seem feasible.
I can’t guarantee The Fifth Element will be for everyone. If the phrase “Star Wars prequels but sillier and hornier” immediately sets your eyes a-spinning, just stay away from this one. I can’t defend it from accusations of cringe, and I especially can’t claim it handles depictions of women well at all. But I have a lot of fun with this movie; even its strange, rough edges endear it to me when I watch it.
The Fifth Element received sharply mixed reviews upon release in 1997, both by critics and by that initial Cannes crowd. Its current Rotten Tomatoes score of 70% doesn’t really convey that, since that site factors in certain retrospective reviews and people have generally been kind to this movie in the long term. But the poor contemporaneous reviews were so plentiful that you can find interviews with Besson 20 years after the movie’s release where it’s clear he’s still upset by them.
Janet Maslin from The New York Times reviewed the movie from Cannes, and decried it as empty spectacle: “It delivers that big badda-boom and nothing more.” Barbara Shulgasser from The San Francisco Examiner said that everyone who went to see the movie (which she described as novel but lacking any narrative) was being swindled. Roger Ebert, meanwhile, called it “one of the great goofy movies,” as well as “a jumble that includes greatness.”
Again though, cult movies aren’t defined by mixed reviews and a successful box office run. And oh boy, did The Fifth Element do well in theaters. The film crushed its opening weekend with a $17 million pull, easily debuting at number one. It dropped significantly to $11 million the next weekend (after reviews had circulated), but that was still good enough for the top spot. After that, the movie naturally slid down the rankings, but was still able to linger around until October of that year in some theaters. It ended up with an American box office gross of $63 million, which sure, not great considering its budget. But an extra $200 million from the worldwide release ensured that the movie was a monster success financially.
Actually, this was mostly a French production anyway. I guess its run in America should be considered part of its international release?
The Fifth Element ended up winning a few Cesar Awards, which are basically the French version of Oscars. Here in the States though, the awarding bodies were less prestigious; both Jovovich and Tucker earned Razzie nominations for their performances in the film. I can kind of understand enough people being turned off by Tucker’s strangeness for that to happen, but nothing about Jovovich’s performance is bad. It’s tender, funny, badass, physical, and highly reliant on her ability to naturally speak a fictional language as though it’s all she knows. Golden Raspberry Awards, you’re on thin ice.
Weird things will almost always find an audience, and The Fifth Element is no exception. Over the years, more and more fans have turned to it as seminal scifi pulp of the late ‘90s, and its quirky scifi trappings can be found in later hits like the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. There’s still debate among weirdos who care (like me!) on whether it’s so bad it’s good or actually just good. I lean towards the latter. Everything I laughed at in the movie felt intentionally placed, save for maybe a chuckle at the movie’s honest attempt at sentimentality at the climax. But I don’t think that makes the movie a failure at all.
The Fifth Element remains as a strange curio of its time. It’s not a disaster movie, there are barely any computer effects, and its inspirations are more closely tied to mid century French comic books than anything general American viewing audiences could relate to. Maybe there was a lingering appetite for this kind of bright, fun scifi in the wake of the Star Wars Special Editions, a taste that will be further served by at least one other movie later in the summer of ‘97.
Yet Besson’s world feels so separate from Lucas’s, maybe because it more firmly shows us one of our own possible futures. As Y2K approached, many Americans had growing anxiety over what the future would look like. We were cloning sheep, we’d just launched the first Mars rover, hell maybe all these computers would stop working in a couple years when the ball dropped on the millennium. No one could have known what the world would look like even 10 years on from 1997, let alone a couple hundred.
The version of the future in The Fifth Element offers both comfort and concern. Things in its vision of the 24th century are dirty, simultaneously overcrowded and strangely antisocial. But it’s not just despair. There’s laughter in the future, and love so powerful it seems more like magic than any of the flying cars soaring overhead.
Maybe to some people, it’s sad that we’ll still just be human beings with our same flaws and issues in hundreds of years, but people connect to characters like Korben Dallas, Zorg, and, yes, Ruby Rhod because they’re so identifiably human. They struggle with work, money, building relationships, and choosing love in a world that sometimes seems built on hate and disconnection.
It’s all couched in a silly wrapping to sometimes baffling results, but Besson’s teenage vision is strikingly vivid, frequently a blast, and strangely still human under it all. I can’t guarantee you’ll like The Fifth Element, but you’ll never see anything else quite like it.
Rating: 4.5/5
Next Week: He’s loomed over this column as a patron saint of cinema for too long. It’s time Steven Spielberg got his time in the sun. He and the rest of America return to Jurassic Park with the first of its sequels, The Lost World, in next week’s column.
See you then!
-Will
Well, maybe they should have been a little surprised, since the director was still married to his second wife, French actress Maïwenn Le Besco, during production of The Fifth Element. Besson had met Le Besco when she was 12, started dating her when she was 15, and married her at 16 when she got pregnant with their daughter. He was in his 30s during all of this. Yeah, sorry to ruin this story with Luc Besson’s blatant pedophilia, but the dude’s a monster