chapotraphouse

Legit wonder how much of this look was inspiried by Super Mario Brothers because these two movies have to be in dialogue in regard to their overall look, aesthetic, and general gonzo style..

I remember being fascinated about how the future looked straight up grimy. Like you would rest your hand on any surface and it would be covered in oil, soot, garbage juice, or some bodily fluid. Even the space airport casually has a wall of garbage bags and no one seems to mind at all? But unlike other 20th century sci-fi movies where the future is grimy like robocop, judge dredd (the one with stallone) or blade runner, there's not a value judgement to the dirtiness. We're never made to feel that this future society is decadent, d*generate, or overrun only because it's dirty. It doesn't shy away from how stressful it is to live in and in this world, but it shows people going about their lives, not wallowing in the filth.

Ruby is camp gay, but immediately after his introduction he's having sex with a flight attendant and I'd love if anyone has an analysis of that juxtaposition.

I think it's impossible to act like Ruby Rhod's not camp gay-coded, but the scene with the flight attendant to me shows that Ruby is a purely sexual being. Maybe it's because I'm pan, but the whole sequence in the airport/spaceship reads to me as Ruby being frustrated/turned on by Korben's refusal to engage, and taking it out by banging the next person who will pay attention to him. Ruby is definitely camp, but I think the character is better understood as a hyprrsexual being, for whom sex is as turned to 11 as any other part of his personality. It's also a very 90s European coding of gayness, where soft, femme-coded hypersexuality was the more mainstream perception of queerness people like Luc Besson would've been in contact with in places like London, Paris or Berlin.