REVIEWED: THE ADVENTURES OF ARSÉNE LUPIN THIS exhaustingly busy adaptation of Maurice Leblanc's turn-of-the-century yarn about a French gentlemen thief should, in principle, be more fun than a barrel of burgundy, writes Donald Clarke
Every scene has a climax. Every shot has a climax. Every climax has several sub-climaxes folded into it.
Throbbing to a hyperventilating score which never simmers when it can boil, the film takes in kung fu, witchcraft and vintage car chases on its hurried way through a plot fecund enough to inspire a dozen less frenzied entertainments. Even the director's name - Jean-Paul Salomé, would you believe? - drips with flamboyance.
Romain Duris, a toothier, more French Daniel Day-Lewis, plays the titular anti-hero who was trained as a kickboxer by his late father before dedicating his life to thieving baubles from the gentry. Kristin Scott Thomas, in one of her occasional French roles, glowers icily as a femme fatale who may or may not be several centuries old. So complex are their dealings that they defy both summary in a short review and, it transpires, lucid exposition in a lengthy film.
Unhappily, The Adventures of Arsène Lupin, though never boring, is too chaotically structured to be anything other than intermittently entertaining. There is plenty of noise and bluster about, but, unlike the superficially similar Brotherhood of the Wolf, this picture plays like the work of people who have no taste for vulgarity, just a propensity towards it.
