Y'all are making me uneasy…
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DFC-2 — 10 years ago(January 25, 2016 05:00 AM)
Considering that Luc Besson impregnated and married a 16 year old, I think there probably is some kind of lolita fetish subtext in this film.
Excepting, of course, that:
They never married and were both independent adult (16 years of age under French law) professionals before and after their relationship
Maiwenn was 5' 9" tall, looked like and was considered an adult, was independent and successful as an actress, and sought out Besson for a relationship, rather than the other way around. Hardly childlike in appearance, she plays the adult prostitute in this film and Plava Laguna in
The Fifth Element
.
Neither Portman nor her parents, who were closely involved with everything from the initial reading of and changes to the script, to the actual filming on the set ever saw or felt any such vibe or exploitation of any kind.
Neither Portman nor Besson nor Reno saw the relationship as sexual. In early interviews promoting the film, Portman described her role as a child mistaking paternal love for romantic love. Besson described the relationship as two lost children, emphasizing the contrasts of experience, size, strength, and dominance/passivity, with no sexual component at all. Reno wrote that, even if they had been able to stay together, his character was incapable of a sexual relationship.
The only charade Besson asked Portman to do was Gene Kelly, the Madonna and Marilyn Monroe were things she had seen on TV as a child at home and she was used to putting on such performances in front of her family, who, along with most normal adults, would see such an act by an 11 or 12 year old as funny rather than provocative.
Both Besson and Reno had daughters around Natalie's age when the film was made.
Besson is one of the few French entertainment personalities who did not support Polanski's freedom from American prosecution, saying that he should be subject to the law. -
DFC-2 — 10 years ago(January 25, 2016 11:18 AM)
If you could look back in your own ancestral past, I think you would find many such relationships where the young woman was younger than seventeen among your ancestors and they stayed married and never were guilty of anything "inappropriate and shameful," but you are welcome to despise anyone you wish.
My own ancestry includes a proper New England couple where the girl was 15 at marriage. They lived together in happy matrimony for over 60 years, and had a dozen kids who each lived past the age of 80 and had children of their own.
The modern age of consent is largely an artificial construct based in part on the state avoiding the psychological, educational, and social costs of exploitation. We are now better off by protecting young girls from being taken out of school. However, most of human existence came before there were public schools or the opportunity for a girl to complete higher education, and the age of consent was generally much lower, without the world being overrun by pedophiles. -
TxMike — 10 years ago(January 27, 2016 07:43 AM)
As an amplification of your point my mother was 15 when she met my dad, she was 16 when she married my dad who was 25. They stayed together until he died and they had 5 children, I wouldn't be here otherwise.
.... TxMike ....
Take a risk, Take a chance, Make a change.
Kelly Clarkson - Breakaway -
DFC-2 — 10 years ago(January 27, 2016 09:51 AM)
I have two grand nieces, sisters, who got pregnant with their boy friends at the age of 15. Both are now in their twenties still living in marriage with the boys who got them pregnant, one with two sons and the other with two daughters and a son. They post pictures of their happy families and share family details among many friends who did likewise. All that they have asked of my Mother, their great-grandmother is not to judge them. My grandmother married at 16. Their grandmother married at 22, but was less mature than they were at 15.
It is easy to say they were too young to make they choices they did, but neither case was an issue of abuse, and they have made it work in ways my sister never could because of her self-involved immaturity.
Mogeary talked about fetishizing, but young people can be fetishized many ways, not least by pompous adults who view them as mere innocent babies who are suddenly transformed into competent adults at 18. Real human lives are a little more diverse. -
lanis_cupus — 10 years ago(February 10, 2016 02:51 AM)
The fact that you're so vehemently defending the director's actions with a minor calls you into question.
Yes, there were (natural) sexual undertones in the original version of Leon. And NO, under no circumstances is it acceptable to get a teenage girl pregnant in today's world.
Is this to be an empathy test? -
DFC-2 — 10 years ago(February 10, 2016 03:17 AM)
The fact that you're so vehemently defending the director's actions with a minor calls you into question.
Yes, there were (natural) sexual undertones in the original version of Leon. And NO,
under no circumstances is it acceptable to get a teenage girl pregnant in today's world
.
All I have done is say that condemnation of Besson is unwarranted on the information we have, and that Maiwenn was not a minor under French law when she became pregnant with Besson. Your final statement about women under 20 (teenagers)condemns millions of legitimate relationships around the world and in your own family's past, not to mention almost certainly accusing your own government of being guilty.
Under the circumstances, I take it as a badge of honor that I fail to please such an over-the-top prejudiced individual. -
lanis_cupus — 10 years ago(February 10, 2016 04:27 AM)
In the 1800s you might have been offering a girl a life that she'd otherwise have no chance of attaining. Today's young women have social potential; they have optionsat least until someone like you comes and steals those options away by knocking them up. Steals their LIFE away.
Now if you don't mind, I have women to seduce. But I'll be back one day. -
DFC-2 — 10 years ago(February 10, 2016 07:02 AM)
Actually my wife and I got together when I was 29 and she was 26, both of us choosing to complete our educations and work as professionals before thinking about marriage. Most people throughout history are like us, even when the age of consent for girls was 12 in the middle ages.
Puberty, however, has been hitting children younger than ever in our well-fed age, and some end up making choices for themselves with people they love before the age of twenty. I wish them freedom from people like you. -
lanis_cupus — 10 years ago(February 10, 2016 11:11 PM)
Yes, and the faster physical development takes place, the slower psycho-emotional development seems to be taking placeWHICH IS ALL THAT MATTERS.
By the way, which is it? Was Leon an asexual hen or a 15 year old boy? Because those two are about as diametrically opposed as it gets. -
DFC-2 — 10 years ago(February 11, 2016 03:43 AM)
I guess it depends on the 15-year-old boy. All I know is that:
Portman understood that her character was supposed to have mistaken paternal love for romantic love
Besson told Reno that he was like a hen that only looked like a rooster and to think of himself as a 15-year-old-boy
Reno said that he considered his character incapable of a sexual relationship, that even if he had survived and lived with Mathilda, he would have left her alone while he went elsewhere
Besson's first wife was 25 when they married, one year younger than him, and they divorced in 1991, probably after the premiere of Nikita in the U.S. in April of that year.
Maiwenn was born 17 April 1976, making her an adult under French law in 1992 and used it to escape her Mother who had exploited her for years. She left another boyfriend for Besson, was the headline star of her own film which opened April 22, 1992, and spent her time with Besson rebuilding her life into something she wanted. Later, she directed their daughter in a movie about her childhood. -
DFC-2 — 9 years ago(May 11, 2016 02:49 PM)
I'll buy that, though we are probably seeing a different form of redemption.
To me, every Besson film up to Leon was about Besson's childhood. He described himself as the ugly reminder of a bad marriage. He was the child of two professional divers, and spent a very lonely childhood in rural Mediterranean locations swimming in the ocean with various minders monitoring him from a boat. Once, off the coast of Yugoslavia, he had one very long blissful day with a friendly dolphin that changed his life. He became obsessed with dolphins as a superior form of life and dreamed of being a scientist devoted to the study of dolphins before a diving accident at 17 left him unable to dive anymore. He became suicidal, but eventually pulled himself together enough to begin learning the film trade. Even so, he still thought of nirvana as dropping down deep into the sea as a free diver (no scuba equipment) and never surfacing. Professional free divers who do this talk of experiencing a euphoria that can easily lead to death. A famous woman free diver recently died this way.
All his early films are about dolphin avatars, sleek graceful people who don't fit in, operate in multiple dimensions in unpredictable ways and all end up choosing some form of death or oblivion at the end. The Big Blue specifically references the death of a free diver who can't handle real life. The death of Leon is a mirror image of the ending of The Big Blue, with Leon's drop down the dark stairway and hallway at the end with a smile on his face. Subway ends with the hero dying with a smile on his face and a bullet to the head. Nikita drops into oblivion.
Mathilda, however, survived. Portman's ebullient spirit seemed to have enabled Besson to exorcize his demon in the revised narrative he created for her. Leelou in The Fifth Element, was created before this film and her version of the athletic alien to normal life also survived in the later film. Later narratives were more about the regular human world, no longer running from it. -
lanis_cupus — 9 years ago(May 29, 2016 09:30 PM)
In the end, it's a good movie. But the scene with Mathilda running down the hall in her underwear has to go. The other bits of sublimation were tolerable and were it not for that scene I probably wouldn't have watched with as much scrutiny. But that's too blatant. She could have been wearing more clothes and advanced the plot just the same.
Is this to be an empathy test? -
DFC-2 — 9 years ago(May 30, 2016 06:10 AM)
I have over 700 friends on Facebook, most with families and frequent posts of their kids in many different situations no less revealing than what Besson showed. I'm sure that most of them would be horrified if they thought any of the friends who they allowed to view these photos was turned on by the images.
The context that I never see is of an adult leering at a child and that behavior being applauded. To me, that distinction is the proper boundary, and I don't think Besson crossed it. -
lanis_cupus — 9 years ago(May 31, 2016 10:29 PM)
I have over 700 friends on Facebook, most with families and frequent posts of their kids in many different situations no less revealing than what Besson showed.
Wow, you couldn't have hit on a more sensitive area. Let me break it down.
Whether they know it, filmmakers are exploiting children. Whether they know it, "Dance Mom's" are exploiting their children. And WHETHER THEY KNOW IT, Facebookers are exploiting their children. It's atrocious to parade one's kids in front of the world in such a manner. I've said that from day one about FB and I can't believe you would support such content. That alone tells me we have no ground for discussion and I'm sorry I ever engaged on this matter. Goodbye. -
DFC-2 — 9 years ago(June 01, 2016 02:08 AM)
Whether they know it, filmmakers are exploiting children. Whether they know it, "Dance Mom's" are exploiting their children. And WHETHER THEY KNOW IT, Facebookers are exploiting their children. It's atrocious to parade one's kids in front of the world in such a manner. I've said that from day one about FB and I can't believe you would support such content. That alone tells me we have no ground for discussion and I'm sorry I ever engaged on this matter. Goodbye.
I'm sorry for your hang-ups. They must keep you very busy policing the world.