Dante 01

... it's still worth watching. This has references to Dante's the Divine Comedy with its 3 chapters, the seven deadly sins, Hindu's seven chakras, a Christ-like Messiah, and Hell represented by a fiery planet - and throw in Persephone, the queen of the underworld in Greek mythology for good measure. This is actually a good film, well most of it, although ultimately it tries to be too ambitious.

The story is set entirely on a claustrophobic space station orbiting the planet Dante, a huge ball of fire. A shuttle craft arrives carrying a doctor, played by Linh-Dan Pham (probably best known for Mr Nobody) and a new prisoner (Lambert Wilson), who has some strange powers. The only other actor familiar to me is the ever reliable Dominique (Delicatessen, Alien Resurrection, Micmacs etc) Pinon.The religious allegory, which includes for example a Saviour in the form of Jesus on the cross and which suddenly seems to come out of the blue, doesn't really work. And nor do the 7 prisoners (each with a different colour on the computer's tracking screen) really appear to represent the 7 deadly sins, apart from the fat one who is obviously Gluttony and who is 'cured' after his encounter with the mysterious new inmate known as Saint George. This film is no doubt flawed but it does maintain interest throughout and is better than most reviews here give it credit for. For the record this is a 2007 film, not 2008 as stated above by Love film (OK so it's not important but I like accuracy).

Format: DVD

Painful.

It starts off pretty cool. But just doesnt get any better. But you DO get more confused as you watch, so that's a 'bonus?'.

A really crappy movie indeed. Basically, I'll never watch it again.

I want my hour and half back!

I dont know what to say about this, other than don't bothr.

Honestly. It started off really well then just kind of went nowhere. The ending looked like it had been done by four yr old kids with a projector.

Very disappointing.

I had high hopes for this film. I absolutely loved the random weirdness of City of the Lost Children and Delicatessan. And with a space research station orbiting giant flaming planet this seemed to be following suit. Dark, dank, close environments, strong use of atmospherics, vivid but limited colour palette, strange premise. And as the story goes on (scientists testing new techniques on psycho prisoner volunteers) you wonder where things will go. Where things actually do go you would never have guessed and what a let down. It's as if they gave up towards the end and just wanted to get it finished, there's a lack of explanation or even inferrence outside of the Dante's Inferno allegory (which is weak and almost forgotten by the third circle of hell, which is a shame as more could've been made of it - don't worry this is not any kind of spoiler). As for the end, well, what can I say apart from Aronofsky's 'The Fountain' did it better.

I wouldn't bother ----not recommended----

The budget for this film was slashed by half during production - and it shows. There are some interesting visual effects, but not much of a plot, character development, tension, or any of the other qualities that make a good movie. Really not worth watching, even if you're a Caro fan.