The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec (2010)

The DVD release of The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec got a bit lost amongst the wave of Hollywood superhero summer blockbusters that released over the past month or two and that’s a real shame because it is an absolute treat. The film comes from Luc Besson, a French writer/director whose star seems to shine brightly and then disappear from the cinema landscape for years at a time. A quick check on IMDb.com would suggest he prefers writing of late, which I suppose would explain why the director of several international hits (The Fifth Element, Leon: The Professional and La Femme Nikita to name a few) isn’t in the limelight more often these days.

Adèle Blanc-Sec is a comic adventure set mostly in Paris in the early part of the 20th century. It follows the adventures of the an irrepressibly charming writer/adventurer who’s equal parts Indiana Jones, Lara Croft and Lucille Ball. Adèle is played by the delightful and extraordinarily-talented (and stunningly-attractive) French actress Louise Bourgoin and once she enters the story it’s almost impossible to tear your eyes off her. The film was obviously intended as the first in a series and I’m hoping it did well enough at the box office to muster up enough investors for another installment because I might even be enticed to leave Segredos and venture out to an actual movie theatre for that one.  

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec isn’t without its flaws, but I’d stack it up against any comparable American-made film (the turd-like Night at the Museum series comes to mind for one). Adèle ranks up there as one of the giddiest film experiences I’ve had all year. The action isn’t particularly physical but rather verbal, full of dry wit and unbridled optimism. The result is one of those typically-delightful French comedies, but accentuated by virtue of its big budget and CGI action spin. As a comedy, Adèle is pure entertainment from beginning to end, with a cast of colourful characters, loads of clever wordplay and an appealingly-ironic worldview. The characters, other than Adèle, while colourful and vivid, are mostly window dressing and several suffer from a lack in dimension and depth. Bourgoin’s Adèle is the only one to be developed in any tangible way, but she’s so magnetic that you tend to forgive the two dimensional qualities of the others.

Besson adapted the screenplay from a series of popular graphic novels written and illustrated by French artist Jacques Tardi from the mid-’70s onward. The pterodactyl case, Police Inspector Caponi and several other characters are drawn from the first of these comics, but I’m not sure how closely the film follows the progression of Tardi’s original works. What I can say is the result on screen is an amalgam of fun and fantasy that would make Terry Gilliam proud. As a standalone film, some might find The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec a bit frustrating. A number of plot threads are obviously meant to carry on in future installments and if those don’t come to pass, it would be a bummer. If they do manage to get the next adventure made, I hope this first film finds the audience it so richly deserved, but obviously missed this time ’round because as an appetizer, this Gallic-flavoured comedy-adventure is a tantalizing gem.

After just 3 days, Captain America slips to my second favourite comic book movie of the year…. and I was just kidding about going to the theatre with the humans.

Like that’s ever gonna happen.