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What it's about:
The Cousteau family - Jacques, his wife Simone and their two children, Philippe and Jean-Michel - live in their beautiful house by the Mediterranean sea. By day they dive, by night they watch the stars. It's paradise on Earth. But, Jacques is never content. He lives and breathes adventure and believes absolutely in the virtues of progress. With his invention, the aqualung, his recently acquired vessel, the Calypso, and a crew of free-spirited adventurers, he is ready to cross the world's oceans.
What we thought:
The German word “sehnsucht” means to long or yearn for something. It’s often used to describe that strong emotional feeling you have deep inside when something is missing from your life or unattainable.
No other word could better describe the feeling I had when I walked out of the Labia theatre in Cape Town, after watching the French film, L'odyssée.
This masterpiece filmed in Cape Town, Croatia and Antarctica tells the life story of researcher, scientist and filmmaker Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau over 30 years.
It stirred in me desperation to see the world. To escape from the confines of this comfortable life I’ve setup in the Mother City. With this feeling of desperation comes frustration for not being able to just pack-up and go. It’s so much more than wanderlust. It’s far more complex and goes much deeper.
L'odyssée stirred this in me. So beautifully crafted and put together I almost couldn’t bare the fact of leaving the cinema and returning to mundaneness that waited just outside its doors. I wanted to stay in this cinematic world where I could dive with whales and hitch a ride on a giant boat with one of the world’s most legendary explorers.
One breath-taking scene after another this marvellous piece of work will take you on a journey that you hope never ends. Directed by Jérôme Salle, who also directed Zulu – which was filmed in South Africa, this biographical adventure film is unmissable.
Salle artfully weaves the storyline with real-life environmental issues whilst subtly incorporating elements that bring homage to the undertones that made Cousteau’s films so unique. He paints a wonderful picture using a pantone of blues, greys and greens with a splash of red.
The lead cast including Lambert Wilson (Jacques-Yves Cousteau), Pierre Niney (Philippe Cousteau) and Audrey Tautou (Simone Cousteau) so skilfully bring this true-life story to the big screen that you can’t help but fall madly in love with each of them.
If you have a sense of adventure and an untamed longing to travel this wonderful film will make your heart glow and have you uneasy to start your own adventure. By the end you too will want to bask in the sunlight on the deck of a ship sailing off to a destination unknown.
