Les aventures extraordinaires d’Adèle Blanc-Sec
Year:
2010
Running time:
107 mn
Nationality:
France
Language:
French
Genre:
Adventure, Fantasy, Comedy
Director:
Luc Besson
Producer:
Apipoulaï, Europa Corp, TF1 Films Production
Screenwriter/s:
Luc Besson
Cast:
Louise Bourgoin, Mathieu Amalric, Gilles Lellouche, Jean-Paul Rouve, Jacky Nercessian, Philippe Nahon, and others
Summary of the film
The film is a free adaptation of the French comic book series Les Aventures Extraordinaires d’Adèle Blanc-Sec by Jacques Tardi. The plot is set in 1911, in Paris. Adèle Blanc-Sec (played by Louise Bourgoin), a young, beautiful, and courageous journalist, wishes to reanimate her twin sister Agathe (played by Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre) from the vegetative state she is in as a result of a terrible accident while playing tennis. In order to do so, she decides to locate the whereabouts of the mummy of Patmosis (played by Régis Royer), the chief physician of king Ramesses II (played by Christian Erickson), so he can be revived by a rather eccentric professor, Marie-Joseph Espérandieu (played by Jacky Nercessian), who has recently managed to revive a pterodactyl from a fossilised egg kept in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. She believes that the revived Egyptian physician would be able to finally heal her sister.
Adèle Blanc-Sec in front of a secret mechanism in the tomb of Patmosis in Egypt (Screenshot by the author)
The revived king Ramesses II in the company of Patmosis, dressed in the early 20th century clothes, and other Egyptians in the Louvre Museum (Screenshot by the author)
Egyptomania narratives or motifs
The film creatively employs a number of stereotypes associated with ancient Egypt. Egyptian priests and physicians are here portrayed as possessors of secret and advanced knowledge but also as miracle-workers. The tomb of Patmosis is depicted as filled with many treasures, with some objects directly inspired by those discovered in the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings (KV 62). In addition, the tomb contains many traps and secret mechanisms, which seems to be an intertextual dialogue with other adventure films, particularly with the Indiana Jones series. The film also includes the character of Ramesses II as one of the most iconic pharaohs of Egypt. One should also note the creative elaboration of the stereotyped image of archaeologists as treasure hunters that have to deal with both ancient traps and modern villains (also known from the Indiana Jones series), as well as the stereotype of Egyptologists as rather eccentric and chaotic figures.
Author: Filip Taterka
Other information
Rafaelic, D. 2021. Ancient Egypt in Cinema, in A. Bednarski, A. Dodson, S. Ikram (eds), A History of World Egyptology: 487. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
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