The Messenger: The Story Joan of Arc
I worried for a moment that this was gonna be another movie to suffer from the “Jane Eyre syndrome”. Jane Valentine, the young girl who plays Jeanne d’Arc here aged 8, is not only extraordinary, powerful, everything I in my limited knowledge associate with this person and story, not only is she a dead ringer for Milla Jovovich in the eyes, but she’s also onscreen for a hell of a longer time than I ever would’ve expected. Unfortunately, following her breaking into the church and taking mass underage, it jumpcuts forward so harshly that if I weren’t watching on the TV I’d have feared a whole reel was missing.
When Milla Jovovich appears, she’s so alternately whimpering and up-in-arms it’s at times unintentionally laughable. She, or Luc Besson, or maybe someone else involved, seems intent on showing Joan’s fear under the circumstances and I don’t know if it works, at least not the way they do it. The whole movie, as a matter of fact, suffers similarly from its own desire to entertain and be epic and commercial, etc, and I’m not sure Besson’s frequently boyish direction (you wouldn’t expect it, but some of the goggle-eyed raving here is extraordinarily reminiscent of Jean Reno in Leon) is so suited to this particular story. The occasional attempts at deliberate humour (“There’s an arrow in your leg.” “Oh. So there is.”) didn’t go down well for me either.
It certainly happens upon some stirring and memorable moments … Eric Serra’s score is reassuringly sweeping, there’s some surprising gore in the battle scenes … and ultimately I did find myself believing even in Jovovich’s manic Joan as a leader – if only because she’s sold so much as a gal who did something while everyone else was talking about doing things. The dodgy reshoot hair on Jovovich that I think I’ve heard Mark Kermode mention a few times in talking about this movie didn’t really bug me as much as I expected either – going back to the Leon similarity, she actually looks a lot like Natalie Portman’s Mathilda in her last prison scene. I’m looking forward even more to seeing the old Carl Dreyer silent now, though.