Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets, review: Cara Delevingne stars in big spectacle sci-fi that's lost the plot

A crash course in both the worst and best of French director Luc Besson, Valerian looks spectacular but its storytelling proves muddled

Dir: Luc Besson, 137 mins, starring: Dane DeHaan, Cara Delevingne, Rihanna, Clive Owen, Rutger Hauer, Ethan Hawke

Luc Besson is a grandmaster of cinematic kitsch, a director who can make us gasp in wonderment one moment and groan in dismay the next. Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets (based on a French comic strip) is a crash course in the best and worst of Besson.

This is reportedly the most expensive French film in history and it can't be accused of skimping on the spectacle. From the Avatar-like opening to the Metropolis-style scenes on the space station, it boasts eye-popping and very inventive and intricate visual effects. The storytelling is so muddled, though, that you half suspect Besson was making the film with the same giant jellyfish on his head that we briefly see threatening to scramble the memory of the heroine, Laureline (Cara Delevingne).

Besson's screenplay is a mish-mash of elements from Star Wars and assorted other sci-fi movies. Our first glimpses of Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline are not auspicious. We encounter them in what at first appears to be a 18-30 beach resort, flirting with very little conviction. Valerian is the Flash Gordon-like young hero, working overtime to maintain peace in the galaxy. He's a bit of a womaniser and a rebel but has an impeccable nine years of service behind him. She's his sidekick and love interest, a goody-two-shoes with an Ivy League education who is every bit as smart and brave as him.

The casting doesn't seem right. DeHaan (who has played James Dean on screen) is both too introspective and too callow to be convincing as the devil may care action hero. His relationship with Delevingne is clearly intended to be similar to that of the warring couples in old screwball comedies. The more they mock and goad each other, the clearer it becomes that they really are in love. We're not provided with much back story about how they became partners or why the Minister Of Defence (an unlikely cameo from the jazz legend Herbie Hancock) has entrusted such youngsters with saving the galaxy.


 DeHaan and Delevingne in Besson’s new film

Besson forces Delevingne into wearing some very outlandish outfits. Her headgear here includes not only the giant jellyfish but also a huge white plate-like object on which she carries a delicacy intended for the ape-like monarch of a group of Boulan-Bathors. One moment she'll be in a bikini, the next in galactic combat gear that makes her look like a latterday equivalent to Jane Fonda in Barbarella.

Plot-wise, the film is confusing. Early on, we see an ancient and highly sophisticated civilisation forced off its planet when a gigantic spaceship crash lands and causes a tidal wave. Its citizens become refugees in space. A few light years later, Valerian is tasked by the Minister of Defence with retrieving a so-called Mül converter, a tiny, piglet-like creature which seems to defecate pearls and has miraculous powers. It takes a long time to work out just how the two events are related.

The set-pieces are choreographed with elan. There's a very cleverly staged early sequence in which Valerian and Laureline pose as tourists visiting the dusty, lawless planet of Kirian, where the Mül converter is hidden. Besson throws in plenty of chases and some wonderfully giddy scenes in which characters plummet through buildings and use butterflies as makeshift parachutes.

One of the film's high points is the brief appearance from pop star Rihanna as the shape-shifting cabaret artist/lady of the night, Bubbles. She is a piece of blue ectoplasm who can take on the identity of almost anyone she encounters. In her effervescent one-woman performance for Valerian, she belts out a show stopping number as if she is Sally Bowles in Cabaret, does some pole dancing and changes costumes at mind-bending speed.

Some of Besson's creatures are also very engaging. There are well-meaning aliens with very gooey handshakes, armadillo-like reptiles with magic powers, and three fast-talking platypus-like animals with miraculous memories and an unlikely ability to haggle.

The film is probably best taken as a 3D fairground ride rather than as a conventional narrative. Its various episodes are spectacular in themselves but don't hang together at all comfortably or coherently. Besson has successfully re-created the universe of the Valerian and Laureline comic books he has read since he was a kid, but he hasn't found a satisfactory storyline with which to plot his way through that universe.

The film is full of pointless cameos. One moment, up will pop Ethan Hawke (as hustler Jolly The Pimp.) The next, it will be a very venerable looking Rutger Hauer (as President of the World State Foundation.) In what is surely a private joke, the also features brief appearances from a gallery of Besson's fellow French movie directors. None of the supporting characters here, whether heroes or villains, have any substance at all. Even Clive Owen's Darth Vader-like Commander is very sketchily drawn. And when the protagonists start uttering lines like "love is more powerful than anything else," it's a clear sign that Besson is lost in space.