This movie is amazing, simply because of the stunning visuals. As such it well worth watching even though it was released way back in 1988. The plot is puzzling at times and often doesn't seem to hang together. Basically, it's about Jacques Mayhol who loves the sea and most of all loves to dive. It is an obsession with him. His childhood enemy, Enzo dives too, but he does it for the money. There is romantic friction with Rosanna Arquette (Joanna), death and drama. In fact all the ingredients of a great movie are here, but it doesn't come cross convincingly in the plot. It is the story of a man whose passion for the sea and diving is combined with ...  Read the complete review

Plot: The plot is ridiculous, although based on a true story, but it's made so beautifully and with such grace that you can't help being drawn into Jacques' World. The director Luc Besson grew up around diving as his parents were both instructors, but couldn't pursue the career himself due to an accident at the age of 17, thus he decided to make a film on Jacques Mayol, someone whom he deeply admired. Jacques (the tasty eyecandy also known as Jean-marc Barr) has a great love for dolphins and the way in which they live their lives, and he is similar to one himself for he can control his body temperature and so forth in order to dive to ...  Read the complete review

Director Luc Besson's The Big Blue,(Le Grand Bleu) has been my all time favourite film, since I saw it in Brittany in the late 80's. I didn't quite know what to expect on that beautiful summer's evening in August when we queued for the late showing at the little cinema in La Baule, a small resort on the Cote Sauvage in Southern Brittany. But from the moment the film began I was spellbound and began to understand why the cinema was packed and why the film was fast becoming a cult film in France. The story is loosely based on the life of real life free diver Jacques Mayol, played by the incredibly attractive Jean Marc Barr, and is woven ...  Read the complete review

The Big Blue (Le Grand Bleu) is a 1988 film directed by Luc Besson. The story revolves around Jacques Mayol (Jean-Marc Barr), a placid and slightly odd young free-diving expert (a sport that involves plummeting to depths of sometimes 300 feet or more with no breathing apparatus) who can hold his breath underwater for an unusually long time. The free-diving world champion - an ultra-confident Italian named Enzo Molinari (Jean Reno) - knew Mayol when they were children growing up in Greece together and has him tracked him down all these years later because he knows that only Jacques can push him to endure greater depths in the ocean and set new free-diving records. ...  Read the complete review

This afternoon while attempting to sort out more of my stuff (its really not easy to integrate a flatload of stuff in to a fully furnished house you know) I came across this DVD, one which I was given by a friend at uni because she hated it but I have come to love. The story in its simplicity is that of Jacques and his love of the sea and its creatures but also draws in Enzo a champion freediver and someone who has known Jacques since childhood, and Johana an american Insurance worker who meets Jacques in Peru where his bodily responses to being underwater and at depth are being monitored by a scientist. The plot as it is is sadly weak meaning the ...  Read the complete review