Subway
Mass public transit, a place where individuals from all walks of life converge, the wealthy dressed in their finery on the way back from the opera or society parties, the workers at the end of their shifts, the buskers and beggars, the fast food kiosks and convenience stores, the conductors and the police trying to keep order, and crashing into them the bleach-blonde Fred in his tuxedo on the run from a Mercedes full of armed gangsters.
Taking shelter in the Parisian Metro, the world below the underground, he befriends purse snatcher Roller who introduces him around while pursued by the gendarmes coordinated by Inspector Roland Gesberg who wishes order in the city and the enforcers of Monsieur Kerman whose bored wife Helena invited Fred into their home, enchanted by the man who then blew up their safe and made off with valuable documents which he is now offering to return for 20,000 Francs…
Released only five years after François Truffaut put Catherine Deneuve on Le Dernier Métro, a period piece of wartime occupation and repression, despite existing in the same physical location Luc Besson’s Subway excursion of 1985 could not be more different, starring Highlander’s Christophe Lambert as the daring thief Fred, Nosferatu the Vampyre’s Isabelle Adjani as Helena and Nikita’s Jean-Hugues Anglade as Roller, a kinetic film in which all bodies are in constant motion.
Opening with a manic car chase on atypically empty Parisian streets, Fred unable to focus without his tunes on cassette, to the comings and goings of train carriages, to roller skates and on feet, two and four, a carnival of characters rotate through the platforms and in the world beneath, the secret places hidden from view of the public, tunnels and access doors and staircases descending, an underground society of the unwanted hidden in the cracks.
Part thriller, part comedy of manners and critique of French class, Helena dressed in diamonds, a star Fred could only hope to orbit even while caught in her gravity, the girl with a gun and shoulder pads rejects the bourgeois life at the Magistrate’s dinner party of intolerable people and their small talk, reinventing herself as another commuter as Fred recasts himself as band promoter, a trip on the Subway a strange and unique experience, a series of abstract impressions rather than a narrative but compelling.
Remastered for StudioCanal, the new three-disc Steelbook edition of Subway contains the film in both 4K UHD and Blu-ray alongside a feature-length archive documentary and new interviews with Anglade, editor and co-writer Sophie Schmit, assistant director Didier Grousset, assistant set designer Didier Naert and Michel Jonasz discussing Arthur Simms, the singer in Fred’s band featured on the soundtrack by frequent Besson collaborator Éric Serra who appears in the film as bass player Enrico.
Subway will be available from StudioCanal from Monday 23rd June
