The Big Blue

Luc Besson's The Big Blue is an unusual film. It is an almost entirely fictional story about two real people. Artistically the thing that it has most in common with is the Bruce Stirling short story Dori Bangs. The film follows the relationship between the divers Jacques Mayol (Jean-Marc Barr), who co-wrote the script, and Enzo Maiorca (Jean Reno). Enzo's surname in the film is changed to Molinari. It starts with their boyhoods together in Greece and both children's love of water. Jacques Mayol and Enzo Maiorca were both world champion free divers. They were born and spent their childhoods on opposite sides of the world.

It's the 1960s. The film is in black and white. Besson invokes the Nouvelle Vague, perfectly crafting a period piece of cinema. After encountering a dolphin while swimming in the sea, a young Mayol (Bruce Guerre-Berthelot) helps his father (Claude Besson), a professional diver. There is an accident in which the father's decrepit diving suit fails. The young Enzo (Gregory Forstner) witnesses the tragedy from afar.

Flash forward to the 1980s, Sicily, full colour. Enzo, the record holder for the deepest free dive, earns $10,000 rescuing a diver trapped in the hull of a grounded ship. This segment is fast paced, bright and full of vibrant colour, contrasting land sea and sky. It is full of humour and bravado. Jean Reno will keep the cocksure comic timing up for the rest of the film. On a whim, Enzo decides to reconnect with Jacques.

Picaresque hard cut, Peru, the Andes. Johana Baker (Rosanna Arquette), an insurance adjuster from New York, is travelling to a remote research station on a glacial lake. She is a caricature of the American tourist, somewhat clueless and carrying far too much luggage. Amongst other things the research station is conducting a human experiment. It's called Jacques Mayol. The physiological changes that occur as he free dives in freezing water are being measured (the real life Jacques Mayol took part in a number of experiments). She encounters Jacques in his wetsuit with oversized goggles. He is quiet, detached, an alien from a science fiction movie walking out onto the ice. She falls hard: amor fou.

Soft cut, the French Riviera. Enzo catches up with Jacques and invites him to Sicily to compete against him in a diving competition. In actuality the pair did meet and were friends but did not compete against each other. New York, Johana Baker is restless. On discovering where Jacques will be she concocts a problem with an insurance claim and has herself sent to Sicily to sort out the nonexistent issue. From this point, what is this movie about? A romantic comedy, a sports movie, an existential musing?

The Big Blue is pure cinéma du look. Everything is slightly exaggerated or contrasted in the service of style. Concept and dazzling image are king. There is Johana Baker's essential Americanism, Enzo's beyond larger than life personality, and Jacques' otherworldliness. The human body is set against the emptiness of deep water, abstracted, becoming a different sort of creature. The goggles and wetsuits also transform, those of Enzo's give him a crustacean like appearance. It is a biopic with no pretence of truth. Rather it is about the imagined self and the imagined versions of others. It is a marriage of sight and sound. Éric Serra, with whom Besson worked with many times, produced a score that is the perfect complement to the cinematography. It can be subtle, blending with the sounds of the natural environment, or pulsative and electronic, similar to Yan Hammer's work on Miami Vice.

Conceptually The Big Blue is about finding the places that people's souls belong. The sea is often used as a death metaphor. The first dolphin in the film appears in Greece, heralding the death of Jacques' father. These creatures crop up in other parts of the film. Finally there is the dolphin as psychopomp. [1] In the last scene of the film, deep below the sea off Sicily, Jacques is led away into the depths by one. His Elysium is beneath the waves.

[1] Dolphins appear as as psychopomps in both Greek and Roman mythology.

Reviewed on: 01 Dec 2025