Subway

Luc Besson, France 1985, 102 minutes

Christopher Lambert stars as Fred, an eccentric character with bright yellow hair and a distaste for safes. Invited somewhat by accident to millionairess Helena's (Isabelle Adjani) birthday party, he takes with him a bunch of compromising documents and takes refuge from his pursuers, her husband's thugs, in the Paris underground. He asks for money in return for the documents, but what he really wants is to see Helena again. Out of boredom, Helena agrees to meet him...

Welcome to the land of Luc Besson, where fantasy and reality meet in a closed, suffocating environment peopled by cartoon-inspired characters. He turns the Paris metro into a labyrinthine underworld where a host of bizarre people co-habit. In his wander around the damp, dimly-lit corridors, Fred meets some of its denizens including a taciturn drummer with a bit of an attitude (Jean Reno), and a handful of mid-eighties troubadours equipped with dark glasses waiting to jazz up the Underworld. This surreal place may be strange and unpredictable but it certainly isn't threatening. A comical sense of camaraderie reigns in here unlike in the "normal" underground, where functionaries are seen in their daily activity of being as useless and idiotic as possible (with devastatingly comical effect), the police being only just capable of serving coffee to world-weary Commissionaire Gosberg (Michel Galabru), and at the upper level, a world dehumanised by money and power, controlled by people like Helena's husband. Indeed, with such a vision of the real world, the dusky passageways where Helena meets Fred and learns about simple friendship seem like a haven.

This brilliant fantasy tale with a title fit to outrage the Franch Academy is dynamically pulsated by Eric Serra's score and never loses its rhythm in search of a good spectacle wiith plenty of funny bits.

"Adjani once again proves herself not only one of the most versatile actresses in European cinema, but also the most beautiful" - Time Out

Review by Katia Saint-Peron
Taken from EUFS Programme 1996-97