Subway

1985 · France · 104 min

Director: Luc Besson
Screenplay: Luc Besson, Pierre Jolivet, Alain Le Henry, Marc Perrier, Sophie Schmit
Producer: Luc Besson, Louis Duchesne, François Ruggieri
Music: Éric Serra
Cinematography: Carlo Varini
Editing: Sophie Schmit
Production company: Gaumont

Awards: César Award for Best Production Design; César Award for Best Sound; César Award for Best Actor · 1 nominations

What the critics say

67 % Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews

Cast

Jean-Luc Miesch

Claude Melki

Constantin Alexandrov

Dominique Hennequin

Guy Laporte

Isabelle Sadoyan

Jacky

Jean-Claude Lecas

What it is about

Fred, a man on the run from gangsters after stealing documents at the birthday party of Héléna, the wife of a powerful man, disappears into the labyrinth of the Paris Métro. There he befriends a roller-skating thief, a strongman who works on the tracks, a flower seller and a group of musicians he hopes to turn into a band. Meanwhile, the police and the mobsters keep closing in, and Héléna, unhappy in her marriage, starts to wonder what she really wants. Rather than a conventional thriller, it is a story of chases, encounters and a longing for freedom.

How it was made

The film was shot partly on location in the Paris Métro and partly on sets designed by Alexandre Trauner. Luc Besson directed it, sharing the screenplay credit with several collaborators, and Isabelle Adjani and Christopher Lambert lead the cast, alongside Jean Reno, Richard Bohringer and Michel Galabru. The opening car chase pays homage to The French Connection (1971), and the ending is loosely based on that of Breathless (1960), by Jean-Luc Godard. Éric Serra's score, and Serra himself appears in the cast, was a notable success: the soundtrack came out on vinyl and cassette in 1985 and sold more than 100,000 copies in France.

Reception and legacy

The film was released in 1985, and in 1986 it was the third most popular French film of the year in France, attracting 2,920,588 cinemagoers. Critics were divided. Janet Maslin of The New York Times praised its energetic visual style and the fun of its scenes in the metro, though she felt the characters and situations were rather thin. It received thirteen César nominations and won three, including Best Actor for Christopher Lambert. It is often cited as the first feature of the cinéma du look, a movement that shaped much of French cinema in the 1980s.