The Big Blue - with many spoilers

The Big Blue is a lengthy, drawn out stab at a mainly fictionalized diving biopic rivalry between two former world champion free divers. There are elements of Romance and Comedy at play alongside the dramatic central story.

Jacques and Enzo were real divers and did actually both hold the world’s deepest dive record, although they were never actually direct rivals and never reached a depth of anywhere near 400ft. Neither Jacques, nor Enzo died whilst diving. They were both alive to see the release of the movie and Jacques actually helped work on the script.

Verdict

My movie ratings consist of thumbs up or middle fingers as sometimes one starring something doesn’t shame it enough. 5 thumbs up = an absolute triumph. 5 middle fingers = a complete piece of shit, go fuck yourself.

The Big Blue - 1 thumb up

Just. Too. Long.

Favourite quote “Find me the Frenchman, Find me Jacques Mayol.” - Enzo instructs his brother how to spend his recently acquired 10 grand.

Average quote:

“Women are like that. Unpredictable, like the sea.” - Jacques' father referring to his Mother’s return to America.

Terrible quote:

“Did I just see a man in a red suit and goggles?” - Johana Baker upon seeing Jacques for the first time. Yes Johana, you did. What the fuck did you think it was?

Favourite scene

Jean Reno’s character; Enzo was the saving grace in this movie. He liked to get his own way, and getting it was often quite entertaining. In particular I enjoyed watching him swig from a hip flask whilst on a dive from a submarine suspended so low beneath an oil rig that the Oxygen had to be mixed with Helium. Apparently a very dangerous thing to do, and I’m sure any drinking mixed with SCUBA diving is a terrible idea. Still, I like to believe that out there somewhere is a crazy Italian rig worker getting smashed in the depths of the ocean whilst sticking his middle finger up to the man.

Best meme from the movie

Analysis

This was not a bad film. It’s not like anyone was at dinner with Andre. This was an average-ish 90 minute long story stretched over 180 minutes. There were so many angles and relationships that didn’t need exploring, especially as badly as this 80’s relic managed it.

It’’s 1988 and weak female characters are rife. It’s hard to believe that the lady who falls in love with Jacques so pathetically is the sister of Alabama from last week’s movie, True Romance. Johana is a terrible character, written terribly. It’s almost as if the character Jacques, who is borderline autistic with women, wrote the character of Johana himself. Almost. And by almost I mean that definitely happened. Jacques wrote some of the movie. So, assuming Jacques wrote himself in correctly (I imagine it would be difficult to get that wrong) then he is the sort of guy to give his fictional love interest lines such as “Did I just see a man in a red suit and goggles?”. Not every girl goes weak at the knees for this attire, Jacques, but keep trying.

Johana is also involved in most of the ridiculous scenes in the film. She is made out to be a complete stereotype of a woman. She is baby hungry (not in a snowpiercer way, she is desperate for motherhood) and constantly fawning over her man. The scene in which she tells jacques she is pregnant barely resembles a real conversation, let alone a conversation about something so life changing.

The scene that had me throwing my hands up in the air and gesturing like an Italian with a ruined spaghetti dinner was however, when Johana leaves her job in New York. She should be in prison. Getting posted to Sicily in the first place was bad enough after spouting out random Italian stereotypes.

“Oooh, sorry boss I have to go to Sicily for my insurance job” “Why?”

“Because Mafia Spaghetti Ferrari Ciabatta”

“Very well”

Explaining that she never got the insurance money from Mafia Spaghetti Ferrari Ciabatta should have been a lot more difficult. Instead her boss asks camply “what was his name?” and decides to let her off with the thousands upon thousands of dollars she’s spent fangirling as a diver’s groupie.

On the subject of spaghetti, let’s talk about Enzo. He was probably the only character I actually liked in the whole movie. He scammed divers, he acted like an arrogant prick and he charmed many pre-diving champagne dinners with his piano fingers. A particularly funny trait was his relationship with his mother, who we first meet as he is pretending not to be drinking alcohol or eating spaghetti in a restaurant with Jacques and Johana, forcing his bowl of spaghetti in front of Johana. This later leads to Johana being served up a huge portion of spaghetti in Enzo’s room by his Mother. As a wise man once said about Enzo:

His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy

There's vomit on his sweater already, mom's spaghetti - Ghandi

One foible I picked up on, which I can only assume is down to a translation error, is that the Director appears to have confused the word Mermaid with the word Dolphin. The movie is riddled with references to the mermaids that you have to go down really deep to meet and then show them that you’re willing to spend your last breath trying to meet them etc etc. Every time Jacques does this he meets a dolphin. He even has a picture of a dolphin in his wallet. I'm pretty sure he leaves the bed he’s just made love with Johana in to go and fuck a dolphin in the sea at one point. Eventually the dolphin mermaid leads him to his death… or does it?

The ending was one of the only things I believe this movie got right. The solemn misery of a diver descending to the dark cold depths of the ocean and swimming away with a dolphin mermaid as a metaphor for suicide was right up my street. Alas, even this was ruined in the version of the film that was released to American audiences. Check out this totally gay ending:

The image of the dolphin jumping over the diver is all over the internet and doesn’t even feature in the version released to Europe. It’s even on the front cover of the DVD case.

The bottom line

Somewhere is this long winded, misguided nonsense is a decent movie about diving with a handful of incredibly well shot, arty scenes. Somewhere. I’d rather throw myself into the sea than watch it again.