Action heroines and heroes alike tend to become subjective in the face of fatal weapons, bloodshed, and techno music. With complex, over-the-top story lines and soundtracks to match, action flicks are all about what will pack the biggest punch; tenderness, such as characters we can sympathize with and relate to, is often considered secondary.
The French film, “La Femme Nikita” is an action film with director Luc Besson’s personal touch. As his story evolves, so too does his protagonist. When we first meet Nikita (Anne Parillaud), she is a drug-addled gang member. When she is busted for ransacking a drugstore, she holds a gun to the chin of a cop and giggles before pulling the trigger. She is sentenced to life in prison, sedated, and wakes up in a cell like room where she is told that her suicide has been faked and if she doesn’t agree to become a government assassin, she will be put under…for real.
Nikita is carnal. Her pale blue eyes are coldly listless and ferocious, staring out from beneath a forest of bushy brown hair. She is frail, and only finds strength when she is striking out at other people. But there is something buried deep inside of her that wants normalcy, and if she chooses to live, there would be no hope of bringing that forth. Still, she surrenders to her new life and must undergo training not only to kill like a professional, but to behave like a human being- and a woman at that.
After years of training, she is released into the real world as a sleeper agent. She gets an apartment and, in a comically romantic scene, a boyfriend who later becomes her fiancé. Of course, just as things are starting to go well for Nikita, duty calls. The tension in the movie comes not from her trying to keep her dual identity a secret, but from her inner struggle between being a killer and being killed, being alive and being able to live. For Nikita to find freedom, she must run away from not just her demons, but also her loves.
Luc Besson is a master of the action film. He uses subjectivity as a tool to create over-the top characters, then gradually peels away their layers while simultaneously crafting slick, well-timed, explosive action sequences. His characters are Pinocchios. They are people you would only find in a movie, placed in direly fictional situations, but dearly longing for human connections and emotions.
“La Femme Nikita” is an exquisitely well-paced movie, flowing seamlessly between scenes of violence, emotion, tenderness, suspense and quiet. The French have a great eye for cinematic detail which utterly envelops us in Nikita’s world of confusion and her search for safety. Nikita’s journey takes her from being a dingy street criminal to a professional killer of the highest order. It also takes her from being a movie character to being a woman.
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