Themes: Marriages of Convenience, Fighting the System, Twentysomething Life
Main Cast: Isabelle Adjani, Christopher Lambert, Jean-Pierre Bacri, Richard Bohringer, Michel Galabru, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Jean Reno
Release Year: 1985
Country: FR
Run Time: 103 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Coming in on the heels of his internationally acclaimed first film, Le Dernier Combat, 26-year-old director Luc Besson created this tongue-in-cheek look at filmmaking and at the denizens in the tunnels of the Paris Metro -- a new kind of underground movie. Fred (Christopher Lambert) has just stolen some major documents from a birthday celebration given by the Paris elite for one of their kind, Helena (Isabelle Adjani). He takes off into the Metro just as it is shut down for the remaining few hours of predawn darkness and once in the Metro encounters several characters in the tunnels. There is a bodybuilder who works out with subway parts, a purse-snatcher, and a flower seller of dubious ethics. Inspired by the moment, Fred decides to recruit a few of the ubiquitous musicians who perform (some of the best music around) on the Metro's byways, and he creates a rock band. Through all of these encounters and activities, the police and others -- including Helena -- are after Fred for their own reasons, none of which coincide. As Fred discovers, going underground can be risky. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
Subway is a 1985French film directed by Luc Besson, starring Isabelle Adjani and Christopher Lambert and is part of the Cinema du look movement. The film was a reflection of the marginalised Génération Mitterrand of the 1980s.[1] Themes of the film include young people without family connections being monitored and policed by older people, the rejection of capitalist society [1] and 'high' culture being usurped by Pop Culture. [2]
Having stolen some compromising documents, a man known as Fred (Lambert) takes refuge in the fascinating underground world of the Paris Métro. While the henchmen of the gangster owner of the documents chase him, Fred develops a relationship with the gangster's young trophy wife Héléna (Adjani) who is getting increasingly bored with her gilded-caged life.
A number of fascinating characters pass by in the storyline, as Fred decides to form a band and perform in the subway. Among the band members are the Drummer (played by Jean Reno) and the Bass Player (Éric Serra), who have since accompanied Besson in the making of most of his movies.
The ending is left open as to what actually happens in the growing love relation between Fred and Helena — and to whether he lives or dies. At a performance with the newly formed band (where Fred has paid off the actual performers at an announced concert with money from a robbery and put his band in their place) he is shot by the henchmen of Héléna's husband before she can reach him to warn him of the approaching danger. The film ends with her kneeling beside him, Fred lying on his back looking content and singing along to the band playing in the background.
The film holds an 86% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on seven reviews[5]. Janet Maslin of The New York Times praised the film's "highly energetic visual style" and "the sheer fun of staging domestic scenes, musical interludes and roller-skate chases in the underground" but added that "[the] characters and situations [are] so thin that they might as well be afterthoughts."[6]
Film references
The scene where Fred holds up a strip of fluorescent tube is a reference to the light sabers of Star Wars. [7]
