Friday, October 05, 2012

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec, movie, blu-ray, region 2 format.

I warmly recommend this funny adventure/fantasy movie by Luc Besson (Subway, The Fifth Element, Leon).
It's hard to understand it has not been released in the US. I guess American audiences are not used to subtitles. (Amazon UK link.)
The heroine (and actress Louise Bourgoin) is sexy and funny and bright, and the various creatures are funny and scary and realistic.
This makes The Mummy look like The Mummy II.

The movie felt very much like you were in a well-established universe, with a famous and classic heroine. And it turned out to be so, Adele is is one of France's most successful adventure heroine characters. Though probably mostly limited to French, because I'd never seen her before. (Maybe it hasn't been exported much because, to my eyes, the comic book seems rather constrained, unemotional, and very wordy. And unlike the movie version, the book's heroine is not all that attractive, physically or as a person.)





5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I highly doubt that a greater percentage of Danish, or British, people like subtitled movies than Americans. Funny, they seem to show plenty of them here in New York. Odd.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

I gues nobody is crazy about them. But Danes, unlike for example Germans, are used to them, because foreign films are subtitled instead of over-dubbed. I think this is a great thing, people learn English easier, and it's a great incentive to learn to read for the young 'uns.

TC [Girl] said...

The stills are sure beautiful. An era that I enjoy seeing the costumes from, very much. :-)

John McClane said...

I find they put them too long on the screen, so that no matter how fast you might read you're still going to miss something.

J.M. said...

Too low on the screen, I meant to say. Also they sometimes get the timing wrong, putting the subtitle up before the person has actually said it.