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The Big Blue
Childhood friends Jacques and Enzo share a passion for the danger of free diving. Jacques, following in the footsteps of his father, who died at sea when Jacques was a boy, harbors a remarkable ability to adjust his heart rate and breathing patterns in the water, with his vital signs more closely resembling those of dolphins than men.
1988 · Directed by Luc Besson · 168 min · Romance · Adventure · Drama · Screenplay in the scene database · 18 frames
Tagline
Danger...Like Passion...Runs Deep
Plot
Children Jacques Mayol and Enzo Molinari grow up in Amorgos, Greece in the 1960s. Enzo challenges Jacques to collect a coin on the sea floor but Jacques refuses. Jacques' father—who harvests shellfish from the seabed using a pump-supplied air hose and helmet—goes diving. His breathing apparatus and rope gets caught and punctured by rocks, and weighed down by water, he drowns in front of the children.
By the 1980s, both are well known for their freediving skills. In Sicily, Enzo rescues a trapped diver from a shipwreck. He is a world champion freediver and now wishes to find Jacques and persuade him to return to no-limits freediving to prove he is still the better of the two. Jacques works as a human research subject with dolphins and is participating in research into human physiology in the lakes of the Peruvian Andes, where his bodily responses to cold water immersion are being recorded. Insurance broker Johana Baker visits the station and is introduced to Jacques. After hearing that Jacques will be at the World Diving Championships in Taormina, Sicily, she fabricates an insurance problem that requires her presence there, to meet him again. The two start dating. However, neither of them realizes the extent of Jacques' allure for the deep. Jacques beats Enzo by 1 metre, and Enzo offers him a crystal dolphin as a gift, and a tape measure to show the small difference between their respective records. Johana goes back home to New York but is fired after her deception is discovered; she leaves New York and begins to live with Jacques. She hears the story that mermaids appear to the ones who truly love the sea and lead them to an enchanted place.
At the next World Diving Championships, Enzo beats Jacques' record. The depths at which the divers compete enter new territory, and the dive doctor suggests they should stop, to no avail. Jacques is asked to look at a dolphinarium where a new dolphin has been placed, and where the dolphins are no longer performing; surmising that the new dolphin is homesick, the three of them break in at night to liberate and return her to the sea. Back at the competition, other divers attempt to break Enzo's world record, but each fails. Jacques succeeds, reaching 400 feet (120 m). Angered by this, Enzo prepares to break Jacques' record. The doctor warns that the competitors must not go deeper, as the pressure becomes lethal at those depths. Enzo dismisses the doctor and attempts the dive anyway but is unable to return to the surface. Jacques dives to rescue him. Enzo, dying, tells Jacques that he was right and that it is better down there. He begs Jacques to help him back down to the depths, where he belongs. Distraught, Jacques refuses, and Enzo dies in his arms. To honor his dying wish, Jacques takes Enzo's body back down to a depth where the human body becomes negatively buoyant, and lets his friend sink into the depths. Jacques—himself suffering from cardiac arrest after the dive—is rescued by supervising scuba divers and requires his heart to be restarted with a defibrillator before being placed in medical quarters to recover.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Screenplay: Marilyn Goldin, Marc Perrier, Jacques Mayol, Luc Besson
- Cinematography: Carlo Varini
- Edited by: Olivier Mauffroy
- Music: Éric Serra
- Production design: Dan Weil
- Produced by: Patrice Ledoux
Cast
- Rosanna Arquette as Johana Baker
- Jean-Marc Barr as Jacques Mayol
- Jean Reno as Enzo Molinari
- Paul Shenar as Dr. Laurence
- Sergio Castellitto as Novelli
- Jean Bouise as Uncle Louis
- Marc Duret as Roberto
- Griffin Dunne as Duffy
- Valentina Vargas as Bonita
- Kimberly Beck as Sally
Production
- Country: France
- Language: English, Italian, French
- Studios: Gaumont, Les Films du Loup
- Budget: $13,500,000
- Box office: $4,000,000
- Themes: dying and death, friendship, suicide, diving, sports, parent child relationship, ocean, italy, competition, oxygen
More by Luc Besson
On this film
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