Shoot For The Sky

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There are certain preconceptions about French cultural icons. They will take themselves and their work extremely seriously. Their suits will be as sharp as their razor-like minds, but they will feign a disinterest in the economics of artistic endeavor. They make few concessions to commerce, and expect their public to attempt to rise to their intellectual level. Luc Besson — at 46, one of France's most successful film directors — dashes all of these expectations.

Sitting in his office in the ritzy eighth arrondissement of Paris, Besson is kitted out in a faded black Nike T shirt and sports a week's growth of beard. He is making the heretical case for liberating France from its compulsion to wallow in art films. "We are finally getting rid of the 'I am an auteur, I have to create' notion," he says, "the idea that a filmmaker doesn't care if his film is seen by only two people."

Such populist views make Besson an anomaly — and, frankly, a bit of a mystery to his compatriots. That doesn't mean they ignore him. Far from it. He's tabloid fodder because of a series of high-profile romances and marriages with insanely attractive actresses like Milla Jovovich and Maïwenn Le Besco. Even if he weren't given to living it large, he would be considered France's most Hollywood-like filmmaker for an oeuvre that consists almost exclusively of action films. Some of them — Léon, The Fifth Element and Joan of Arc — are in English. Perhaps in recognition of his ability to reach audiences, Besson was the go-to guy for the Paris 2012 Olympic Bid Committee, who chose him to make the film that accompanied its final presentation in July in Singapore. Besson's more than $7 million film lasted more than half an hour (the other cities' films were all under 10 minutes) and featured a plethora of France's political and cultural élite promoting the city as an Olympic host. After London got the nod, critics jeered at the film for relying too much on the Paris éternel cliché.

But Besson's hardly licking his wounds. His six-year-old production company-cum-studio, EuropaCorp, will have produced or distributed 16 films this year, including director Guy Ritchie's disappointing Revolver and Tommy Lee Jones' up-coming theatrical film directorial debut, Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (arriving on some European screens this week), which won awards for best actor and screenplay at the Cannes film festival. Action sequel Transporter 2, which Besson co-wrote and produced, hit No. 1 at the U.S. box office when it was released in September and is opening in Britain this week, while the Besson-co-produced stolen-identity romp Colour Me Kubrick, starring John Malkovich, opens in France in January.