Director: Jean-Paul Salome
Year: 2004
Country: France
Rating: 5.5
Arsene
Lupin is brought into the modern age of film technology and CGI. Does it
work for this old time gentleman thief of the early 20th century? At times
sure, but its more Mission Impossible or Indiana Jones than Arsene Lupin.
Directors can't help themselves. Make it slick and fast and give the audience
no chance to ponder the absurdity of it while watching. Director Jean-Paul
Salomé also tosses in more bouncing balls than he can handle that
get lost in the quickly changing shuffle. But it looks great and makes good
use of the period sets and old buildings of Paris. It takes many of the plot
points from The Countess of Cagliostro, a Lupin novel from Maurice Leblanc
written in 1924. It also has more than a passing resemblance to the 1959
film Signé: Arsène Lupin except instead of three paintings
pointing the way to a buried treasure, this time there are three crucifixes.
It begins with Arsene as a young boy being
brought up in a lovely chalet by his father and mother with the loving father
teaching him kickboxing and theft. He is a professional thief who goes on
the run when the gendarme show up to arrest him and turns up later with his
face bashed in. Arsene and his mother have to leave and the film jumps to
some fifteen years in the future where the young man has taken up the pastime
of dear old dad. This becomes Young Arsene Lupin as he is still learning
his craft and is not as charming as he later became in other films. As played
by Roman Durs, he is a bit sour with a look between scorn and sullenness
ever present on his face. I never really took to his performance. He makes
his living by quickly and carefully slipping jewels off of women at social
affairs. But his world is about to get much bigger. And totally confusing.
A young woman (the fabulous Eva Green) from
his childhood whose father owned the chalet runs into him and is immediately
smitten as all women appear to be and invites him back to the family home.
To teach her father kickboxing. Instead, he beds the daughter and then one
night follows the father as he goes out. He comes across a secret cabal of
men intent on re-installing the Bourbon Monarchy and they need three crucifixes
to find a treasure that will finance the coup. They also have a woman they
charge with being a witch, immortal, and order her to be dumped into the
ocean with weights to keep her down for ever. She is played with a wonderful
malicious evilness by Kristin Scott Thomas. The Countess of Cagliostro.
In the books she is one of Lupin's great
rivals and enemies. Arsene saves her and in return she seduces him and love
bombs him - in order to bring him into her plan. It gets very topsy-turvy
as different parties are trying to steal all three of the crucifixes from
one another. Lots of clever escapes, treasure hunting, disguises, fake faces,
action, romantic entanglements and murder. And more than a touch of the supernatural
with flashes of steam punk design. Enjoyable enough but none of it sticks
to you in any emotional way. It seems to have had a sequel in mind but it
never came about.
