Subway
Dir: Luc Besson
1985
*****
What I love about Luc Besson's Subway is that it can never be remade, it's an original that can't be touched, from an era that I feel can never be mimicked. It's part of the Cinema du look school of film making as coined by critic Rapael Bassan. Bassan suggested that Subway, as well as Besson's Nikita and works by Jean-Jacques Beineix and Leos Carax were part of a movement exclusive to French cinema in the mid-eighties that saw directors favour style over substance and spectacle over narrative. I agree that there is a unique similarity in the each director's portrayal of the marginalized youth in Mitterrand's France, all films are stylishly filmed, feature social outcasts, doomed love affairs and sub-culture and indeed, all films share a common scene involving the Paris Metro in someway but I would argue that there is plenty of substance to them. The film's meaning is subjective, it is obviously influenced by films such as The French Connection and A bout de souffle and features many trends of the time but each character represents something different, their actions and traits symbolizing various different aspects of sub-culture and new age thinking. It's a neon spectacular with synth and drum machines. A classic slice of underground meets mainstream in 80's Paris. It's stunning, chaotic and simplistic in equal measure and effortlessly cool, even thirty years later.