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RELEASES Italy

Besson's Adèle a modern, impudent heroine

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She smokes, swims naked and is independent – not bad for a young woman of the early 1900s. Adèle Blanc-Sec is the explosive, diminutive character created by comic book and graphic novel writer Jacques Tardi and brought to the big screen by a director who understands strong heroines, from Nikita to Joan of Arc: Luc Besson.

His The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec [+see also:
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, about a daring popular novelist (wonderful newcomer Louise Bourgoin) who battles mummies and pterodactyls to save her sister’s life, is being released in Italy on October 15 on over 300 screens by Medusa, after having clocked up 1.8 million admissions at home in France, and great success in China and Japan as well.

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"Heroines are extremely fascinating,” said Besson, in Rome to present his film. "Since they are not physically very strong, they must use their intelligence. I was drawn to Adèle’s practical and irreverent side. She will do anything to save her sister, but if she had to save the world, she’d probably just stay home and smoke in the bathtub."

Faithful to the spirit and colors of Tardi’s work, Besson nevertheless had total freedom to adapt the story. "The biggest difficulty was convincing Tardi to give me the rights to the character,” the director explained. "He’s protective of Adèle like a Sicilian father of his daughter and it took me six years to get his permission. But then I wrote the film.”

Besson skirted around the possibility of a sequel, which seems a given, given the film’s very open ending. He says: "There’s nothing in the works. There will be if I find an original idea. For 15 years people have been asking me for a follow-up to The Professional, but I’ve never found a story that was as good [as the original]". Not even the fact that Natalie Portman recently said she’s ready to make a sequel is enough to change his mind.

In the meantime, the French director is working as co-screenwriter and producer on Colombiana, a Mexican Nikita directed by Olivier Megaton and starring Zoe Saldana (Avatar). Furthermore, over the next two years he will dedicate himself to possibly his largest-scale project to date. "Today’s technology allows you to do anything. By comparison, the special effects of The Fifth Element were primitive. The only limit is the imagination, and I certainly don’t lack that," he added.

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(Translated from Italian)

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