It’s hard to fault the elegant opening sequence of Luc Besson’s striking sci-fi epic: the use of David Bowie’s Space Oddity, which plays out in its glorious entirety; a sucker punch of an aspect ratio shift; and a neat repeating motif of handshakes between nations, and later, species. It all combines to explain the genesis of Alpha, the titular space city, with economy and wit. It’s a pity that the smooth assurance of this prelude evaporates once the film proper begins. It’s a movie that always seems to be frantically paddling to keep from being submerged by its own ambition.
But what ambition. Besson goes one better than the sprawling technotropolis he imagined for The Fifth Element. Here, he creates a black market shopping mall that exists on multiple dimensions, a race of iridescent glitter people who waft around a realm that looks like an ocean-themed beachfront cocktail bar and a red light district in which the basest urges in the universe are gratified. It looks arresting, an eye-searing assault of neon and overstuffed special effects.
But given the sheer complexity of the worlds in which the story plays out, it’s not surprising that we lose the thread of the action once in a while. The writing simply isn’t strong enough to compete with the visual impact.
Our guides through the narrative are Major Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and his fellow agent Sergeant Laureline (Cara Delevingne). Along with saving Alpha, the pair are juggling a will-they-won’t-they romantic subplot. They look great in their figure-hugging, rubberised battle suits, but two entirely different life forms in two entirely different dimensions would have more natural chemistry than they do. It’s not so much the performances that are at fault as the dialogue. Flirty lines crash and burn like crippled satellites. An underpowered villain and the absence of an underlying theme don’t help. Besson might have been aiming for an astral fantasy in the vein of Avatar, but he ended up with something closer to the workmanlike galactic ripping yarn of John Carter.