Film Review: The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec

 The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec (France, Luc Besson, 2010):

Review by John J Johnston

The possibility of my reviewing Luc Besson’s latest film was originally suggested because it concerns the adventures of a lady novelist and sometime journalist in pre-WWI Egypt. Although the time period was a little out, the parallels with the founder of the Egypt Exploration Society, Amelia Edwards, seemed evident. However, as it transpires, such similarities were slight...

Unlike the doughty Amelia, the heroine of this film, Adèle Blanc-Sec—‘Like the wine’—is young, glamorous, and far more in the tradition of 1960s comic-strip characters such as Modesty Blaise or Barbarella. This is perhaps unsurprising as the character originated in Jacques Tardi’s series of acclaimed bandes dessinées and the film, itself, is based, specifically, on two of these: Adèle et la bête (1976) and Momies en folie (1978).

The character is transferred from page to screen by relative newcomer, Louise Bourgoin, Besson’s first choice for the role. Adèle is no mere Lara Croft manquée, however: she is a woman of her time—always elegantly gowned and gorgeously bonneted she is at turns charming, acid-tongued, compassionate and incorrigibly headstrong. Adèle’s ‘catchphrase,’ uttered at moments of the greatest peril, assists in signifying the various strands of the character.   

From the outset, the film seeks to engage with the Egyptological milieu during the title sequence with Eric Serra’s evocative, Orientalising theme and caricatures of each of the main characters based around the form of a cartouche.

We then learn that Adèle is in Egypt in order to locate the tomb of Patmosis, a brilliant Ramesside physician, whose mummy she intends to revive for her own purposes…

Although this serves to provide the basic premise for the film, the plot is rather less straightforward, involving, as it does, a living pterodactyl, the President of France, a number of unsuccessful prison escapes, the most bizarre tennis-related accident, can-can dancers, death by guillotine, and the resurrection of Ramesses II, himself, who, of course, speaks perfect French.

Written, co-produced, and directed by Luc Besson, the film looks superb and the cinematography of Besson’s regular collaborator, Thierry Arbogast, in both Egypt and Paris is sumptuous.

As might be expected with an auteur of Besson’s nature, a number of Egyptological inconsistencies do occur in order move the action forward, not least in the inclusion of an ancient machine for wrapping mummies and piles of gold coins strewn around a XIX^th Dynasty tomb. However, any film, which can resurrect the mummy of Ramesses II, looking much as we might expect him to look, and to give him one of its most knowing and amusing lines, should not be dismissed out of hand, even if his glittering coffin appears to be a direct replica of one of Tutankhamun’s, right down to the cartouche of Nebkheperure, over which the king’s bony fingers twitch, briefly in close-up!   

There are aspects, which suggest that the filmmakers do, at least, know their ‘mummy fiction.’ Patmosis returns to life with an almighty sneeze just like the resurrected protagonist of Poe’s ‘Some Words with a Mummy’ (1845) and the subsequent discussion about Patmosis’ anachronistic profession also reminds one of Poe’s ideas regarding the advanced state of Egyptian technology. The treatment of the mummies in this film, rendered by a combination of CGI and motion-capture of actors from La Comedie Francais, is certainly a world away from the bandaged, lumbering monstrosities of popular cinema and more in keeping with their literary antecedents.

All in all, in spite of a couple of rather too broad comedy elements, this is a hugely entertaining film and deserves a wider audience than its largely art-house release is likely to muster.

Currently on limited general release in the UK

French with English subtitles

Rated 12A.