The relationship between French and Chinese cinema has
traditionally seen French audiences responding very warmly to
Chinese movies. Wong-Kar Wai's In The Mood For Love and
2046 made lasting impressions both at the box office and in
people's minds. Similarly, Stephen Chow's Shaolin Soccer
made younger generations of French film-going audiences reminisce
back to their childhood when Japanese soccer anime, Captain
Tsubasa, was all the rage.
On a four-day tour across China to present his new movie
Arthur and the Minimoys to mainland audiences, Luc Besson,
director of Leon and The Fifth Element, met his
fans yesterday after his movie's first public showing in
Beijing.
The film absorbed over four years of Besson's life and cost an
estimated 65 million Euros to make, the highest in French
film-making history. At a press conference in Beijing on Tuesday,
Luc Besson said, "There are too many bad things shown on TV
nowadays: like theft, pollution and racial discrimination. As a
grown-up, I feel ashamed about what we often let our kids watch. I
want to say sorry to them through this movie."
The Arthur, mixing animation with real actors, tells of
young Arthur, a 10-year old boy living with his grandmother in a
country home. His parents being much away most of the time and with
his grandfather having recently disappeared, Arthur buries himself
in fantastical tales, including one about the Minimoys, minuscule
beings with an empire based in his grandparents' garden.
It is not long before adventure calls for Arthur, moved by his
grandmother being threatened with eviction, should she not be able
to pay off the venal property developer who has bought the house
from the bank.
The first part of the tale bears no great originality as
compared to other similar fables but Arthur's vitality, portrayed
by a wonderfully vibrant Freddie Highmore, holds the interest. The
grandmother's troubled and weepy soul remains unfortunately
under-developed while Arthur's caricatured parents seem to leap out
of the mind of Roald Dahl.
His journey into the Minimoys' world and his transformation into
one of their own smacks of a modern Wizard of Oz in the
film's leap from real action to animation and of Alice in
Wonderland. The Minimoys themselves quickly appear very much as can be guessed
from their appearance. Cute, lovable and kind, they are also hardy
and living under the constant threat of Maltazard and his
mosquito-riding horde.
The Minimoys' princess Selenia, both brave and beautiful
(there's a shock), her younger brother and Arthur soon volunteer to
stop Maltazard's plan to conquer the Minimoys' kingdom by flooding
it. Setting off into the wild, the trio face a number of obstacles
and it is in their progress and the relationships they develop that
the film's true charm emerges.
Since Pixar dynamited the animation film industry, it seems to
have become compulsory for every animated movie to appeal both to
children and adults. While Besson proves deft at handling a younger
audience by bombarding them with well-chosen themes, and a good mix
of humor and action, it is in his attempt to reach out to the
parents that the film becomes clunky. Its frequent and evident
references to Star Wars, Saturday Night Fever and
Sword in the Stone are not discreet pastiches, available
only to the keenest eye, but used to bludgeon viewers into letting
off a forced smile.
Besson revealed that he had never worked on an animated film
before but it is regrettable that for a film that took over four
years and 1.7 million hours of labor to complete, more attention
was not paid to the pacing. For a children's movie, even one laden
with serious themes, Arthur and the Minimoys alienates its
audience through choppy editing with gratuitous and unnecessary
scenes haphazardly thrown together.
It was John Lasseter, Pixar's grand master, who once said that
due to the cost-prohibitive nature of an animated movie, the story
needed to be injected with something special that would truly
capture the interest of the audience without only relying on
animated technical prowess. In this, Arthur and the Minimoys
meets with mixed success.
Its story, although by no means an original one, bears enough
freshness and life that it does not get boring. The characters,
although stereotypical, often have an additional and surprising
dimension and the rapid plot contains a few surprises. In one
action scene, Selenia, the doughty warrior princess who quickly
becomes Arthur's love interest, is at one point disrobed in a scene
breathtaking for its risqué audacity.
Chinese parents may be concerned about the relationship between
Selenia and Arthur -- which will be viewed as forbidden puppy love
by traditional Chinese parents, if their children are close to
Arthur's.
Ultimately, Arthur and the Minimoys, though possessing
all the right elements for a good family film, fails in its
composition. It relies too heavily on the presence of the animation
for inspiration, something which Pixar and Dreamworks proved to be
no longer enough. It may have been Besson's to include references
to other tales to provide a point of identification for audiences
but misjudges their use and allows them to dominate over the film's
rare innovations.
Speaking of his film's appeal to Chinese audiences, Besson said:
"It's a film for children which carries a message of love. I hope
Chinese parents will show this film to their kids, because it will
do them a lot of good."
The film will officially hit Chinese screens nationwide on
January 19, 2007. But Besson confessed on Tuesday that he didn't
care too much about Chinese box office revenue. "It is my first
movie openly shown in China. I'm happy and proud that my movie has
become one of the only 20 movies China imports every year." He said
he would have loved to enter the Chinese movie market many years
ago, but he regretted that a Chinese movie policy limiting foreign
movie imports kept him out for a long time. He said he understood
it since the Chinese government is trying to protect the country’s
home-made movies.
Responding to media reports that Arthur is just another
Hollywood product and many bad reviews, Luc Besson disagrees. He
pointed out that Arthur had topped box office takings in
many European countries, receiving "positive" reviews from film
critics, but revealed it has failed in the United States, although
American pop star Madonna lends her voice. "Hollywood believes in
American values, but this movie appreciates the general value of
human beings, that is, to learn to share, to respect people and
nature. Arthur is pure French, its whole soul belongs to
Europe." He revealed he will probably do sequels due to the box
office success in Europe.
The director expressed his affection for Chinese movies, such as
Lu Chuan's Tibetan antelope movie Ke Ke Xi Li Mountain
Patrol when he gave a lecture at the Beijing Film Academy on
Monday. One week earlier, Luc Besson had purchased the French
distribution rights to last year's Chinese box office hit comedy
Crazy Stone.
However, during the presentation at Beijing's UME movie theatre
yesterday, Besson's audiences bitterly let him down. As the credits
rolled, Besson was introduced to an applauding full house. Jovial
and funny, Besson seemed to earnestly relish engaging in a debate
with his Chinese fans.
Unfortunately, a negative impression of the members of the
public attending the premiere was difficult to quell when instead
of the interesting questions he awaited, Besson was subjected to a
barrage of pointless and often insulting comments. One lady argued
with the French director about exactly how many times he had
visited the Chinese mainland while another man arrogantly inquired
as to why Besson had not seen fit to hire major Chinese stars to
provide the voices for the Mandarin dub. The puzzled Besson tried
to maneuver his way past these oddities before asking to judge a
quiz on the movie and being gently shuffled off stage by the
Chinese host, clearly feeling her moment in the spotlight becoming
an embarrassment.?
(China.org.cn by Chris Dalby and Zhang Rui, January 18,
2007)
