There is no actual or implied love interest between Leon and Mathilda. All posts suggesting that should stop. Unless you are a sick pedophile, there's nothing erotic about an 11-year old.
shareAgreed. People bring their own twisted perversions into this film with them.
Its very sad how society sees things that aren't there.
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The original story DOES include a love interest - but that is Mathilda falling in love with Leon. Many scenes still hint at that and depending on the version you got there is a scene where she actually asks Leon to sleep with him but he refuses. But this isn't really about sex, Mathilda just wants to be adult and taken seriously, also she wants to bind Leon to her since he is both her father and protector (and later teacher).
Anyway, love interest or not, it's pointless to discuss this with americans, anything barely sexual is criminalized over there and just trying to defend Leon probably makes me a pedo, perv, sexual predator or whatever their newest buzzword is.
Anyway, love interest or not, it's pointless to discuss this with americans, anything barely sexual is criminalized over there and just trying to defend Leon probably makes me a pedo, perv, sexual predator or whatever their newest buzzword is.
Actually that assessment is basing on my own observations and conversations with americans on various websites, forums etc. in the past 20 years. Add to that the ridiculous MPAA rating system that weeds out anything barely sexual but has no problem with decapiations in movies for 12yos, incidents like "nipplegate", the countless abstinence-only advocate groups in the US (not just groups, the local government Utah was considering legislature to make it illegal to teach anything but abstinence only in grade school!), the fact that there are STILL numerous states that outlaw practices like oral sex ...
You are 320 million people. Of course I am generalizing - how else could I describe such a large number of people? Of course there will be many that aren't like that, but in comparison to other western countries? Please. You almost rival asians.
I'm American and I agree with puschit. We're so deathly afraid of sexuality that even in this film with zero nudity or sex scenes people lose their minds. Never mind a 12 year old that's killing or aiding in the murder of dozens - she has a crush OMG!@
shareDoes she have a crush or is she mentally disturbed? I think the latter. And she *would be* after all she's been through. The point is that there's something unhealthy about a 12 year old having such a pronounced interest (sexual included) in an older man. Yes, Mathilda just wants to feel grown up...but she wants to do so by way of sex (and violence). This is a sign of someone who's been abused, which is clearly the case.
Watch the original (long) version. There's very little innocence to be found. The themes run deep and tragic. And as for Leon, I did notice a moment where he seemed to be "checking" his desires. It was the time he left the apartment, paused, and exhaled heavily. He might have even leaned back against the door. I don't feel that this was sheer exasperation but regardless, this movie has a sexual strain and I believe it's meant to.
In the end, Mathilda comes to terms and we find out she's still a little girl (underneath it all), perhaps more capable of loving a plant than a human being. It's as if Leon went into the darkness and rescued her innocence. But the journey to get there was treacherous and this movie should not be taken lightly.
>>> she has a crush OMG
Saying to someone "I want you to have sex with me" is not how I've ever heard the term "having a crush" used.
Having a crush is, in my experience, more along the lines of thinking "Oh, he's so handsome!"
If a private venture fails it's closed down. If a government venture fails it's expanded. M Friedman
Are you demisexual?
__________________
I stopped paying attention to ratings ever since Insomnia received a mere 7.2.
Demisexuality refers to only being able to be sexually attracted to someone once you've formed an emotional bond with them.
"He's so handsome," implies something much more shallow to me, as it only refers to looks.
So I'm confused as to why you are asking them that.
Having a crush, to me is like something not very serious, like the way 12-14 year old girls might feel about boys in Teen Bop or whatever. (I don't even know if that is relevant or understood today.) It's more innocent and more based on fantasy than reality, even in the case of a person you actually know, because when it's just a crush, you don't usually know the person very well, so you kind of fill in the gaps with your imagination/hopes. It's more like, "Wouldn't it be dreamy if he liked me too and we went on a date and kissed at the end?"
"This, however, is not entirely accurate. When the film was first test screened in Los Angeles, the only scene that the audience reacted to was the scene where Mathilda propositions Léon, and he rejects her. The audience responded with nervous laughter, and Besson was pressured to remove the scene. "
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110413/faq?ref_=tt_faq_3#.2.1.14
American audiences totally not prudes tho right?
I don't think you've ever left the states bro
shareAnyway, love interest or not, it's pointless to discuss this with americans, anything barely sexual is criminalized over there and just trying to defend Leon probably makes me a pedo, perv, sexual predator or whatever their newest buzzword is.
I completely agree with you! We Americans are seriously *beep* up in that regard. We idolize Edgar A. Poe who married his FIRST COUSIN when she was TWELVE and then convict a person of pedophilia for sleeping with a 17 year old the day before her 18th birthday. Like 18 is some magical number that transforms a person overnight! Females are physically ready to procreate at 13. Complaints should be addressed to mother nature.
shareThe main thing that I hate about threads like this is people who say: "anyone who interprets this movie in such-and-such a way must be a closet pedophile" or must have any kind of deep psychological disturbance. It just takes a certain kind of sadistic tendency to try to imply that people do, just because of how they interpret a movie scene.
Scariest words in English: We’re from the federal government and we’re here to help. R. Reagan
The bitch about is that almost EVERYBODY on Earth has had thoughts about minors. Whether it's a great looking actress/actor in a movie or someone you see in person. It's physiology. Not that long ago women got married and had children at 13. Nobody ran around screaming PEDOPHILE at those people. Watch the movie "Far From Home". A 14 year old Drew Barrymore was all sexed up for the role. This was done INTENTIONALLY by the filmmaker. And i'm supposed to feel like a pedo for having thoughts about her?? Yeah.....right. I would bet my own life that Drew wasn't even a real life virgin when she made that movie! Now, abducting a minor and forcing them to do things is a different matter. That is psychotic.
shareYou sound like you have a broom up your butt. Yes, Mathilda loves Leon. She TELLS him she does, unless you watched a watered down version more suited to you. And I am a girl, not a pedo and definitely, infinitely not as ridiculously offended as you by cinematic art.
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Considering that Luc Besson impregnated and married a 16 year old, I think there probably is some kind of lolita fetish subtext in this film.
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If you could look back in your own ancestral past, I think you would find many such relationships where the young woman was younger than seventeen among your ancestors and they stayed married and never were guilty of anything "inappropriate and shameful," but you are welcome to despise anyone you wish.
My own ancestry includes a proper New England couple where the girl was 15 at marriage. They lived together in happy matrimony for over 60 years, and had a dozen kids who each lived past the age of 80 and had children of their own.
The modern age of consent is largely an artificial construct based in part on the state avoiding the psychological, educational, and social costs of exploitation. We are now better off by protecting young girls from being taken out of school. However, most of human existence came before there were public schools or the opportunity for a girl to complete higher education, and the age of consent was generally much lower, without the world being overrun by pedophiles.
As an amplification of your point my mother was 15 when she met my dad, she was 16 when she married my dad who was 25. They stayed together until he died and they had 5 children, I wouldn't be here otherwise.
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Take a risk, Take a chance, Make a change. Kelly Clarkson - Breakaway
I have two grand nieces, sisters, who got pregnant with their boy friends at the age of 15. Both are now in their twenties still living in marriage with the boys who got them pregnant, one with two sons and the other with two daughters and a son. They post pictures of their happy families and share family details among many friends who did likewise. All that they have asked of my Mother, their great-grandmother is not to judge them. My grandmother married at 16. Their grandmother married at 22, but was less mature than they were at 15.
It is easy to say they were too young to make they choices they did, but neither case was an issue of abuse, and they have made it work in ways my sister never could because of her self-involved immaturity.
Mogeary talked about fetishizing, but young people can be fetishized many ways, not least by pompous adults who view them as mere innocent babies who are suddenly transformed into competent adults at 18. Real human lives are a little more diverse.
The fact that you're so vehemently defending the director's actions with a minor calls you into question.
Yes, there were (natural) sexual undertones in the original version of Leon. And NO, under no circumstances is it acceptable to get a teenage girl pregnant in today's world.
Is this to be an empathy test?
The fact that you're so vehemently defending the director's actions with a minor calls you into question.
Yes, there were (natural) sexual undertones in the original version of Leon. And NO, under no circumstances is it acceptable to get a teenage girl pregnant in today's world.
In the 1800s you might have been offering a girl a life that she'd otherwise have no chance of attaining. Today's young women have social potential; they have options--at least until someone like you comes and steals those options away by knocking them up. Steals their LIFE away.
Now if you don't mind, I have women to seduce. But I'll be back one day.
Actually my wife and I got together when I was 29 and she was 26, both of us choosing to complete our educations and work as professionals before thinking about marriage. Most people throughout history are like us, even when the age of consent for girls was 12 in the middle ages.
Puberty, however, has been hitting children younger than ever in our well-fed age, and some end up making choices for themselves with people they love before the age of twenty. I wish them freedom from people like you.
Yes, and the faster physical development takes place, the slower psycho-emotional development seems to be taking place--WHICH IS ALL THAT MATTERS.
By the way, which is it? Was Leon an asexual hen or a 15 year old boy? Because those two are about as diametrically opposed as it gets.
I guess it depends on the 15-year-old boy. All I know is that:
Portman understood that her character was supposed to have mistaken paternal love for romantic love
Besson told Reno that he was like a hen that only looked like a rooster and to think of himself as a 15-year-old-boy
Reno said that he considered his character incapable of a sexual relationship, that even if he had survived and lived with Mathilda, he would have left her alone while he went elsewhere
Besson's first wife was 25 when they married, one year younger than him, and they divorced in 1991, probably after the premiere of Nikita in the U.S. in April of that year.
Maiwenn was born 17 April 1976, making her an adult under French law in 1992 and used it to escape her Mother who had exploited her for years. She left another boyfriend for Besson, was the headline star of her own film which opened April 22, 1992, and spent her time with Besson rebuilding her life into something she wanted. Later, she directed their daughter in a movie about her childhood.
My conclusion is that the character, Leon, was created in an effort of self-redemption and perhaps that's why this movie works so well.
Is this to be an empathy test?
I'll buy that, though we are probably seeing a different form of redemption.
To me, every Besson film up to Leon was about Besson's childhood. He described himself as the ugly reminder of a bad marriage. He was the child of two professional divers, and spent a very lonely childhood in rural Mediterranean locations swimming in the ocean with various minders monitoring him from a boat. Once, off the coast of Yugoslavia, he had one very long blissful day with a friendly dolphin that changed his life. He became obsessed with dolphins as a superior form of life and dreamed of being a scientist devoted to the study of dolphins before a diving accident at 17 left him unable to dive anymore. He became suicidal, but eventually pulled himself together enough to begin learning the film trade. Even so, he still thought of nirvana as dropping down deep into the sea as a free diver (no scuba equipment) and never surfacing. Professional free divers who do this talk of experiencing a euphoria that can easily lead to death. A famous woman free diver recently died this way.
All his early films are about dolphin avatars, sleek graceful people who don't fit in, operate in multiple dimensions in unpredictable ways and all end up choosing some form of death or oblivion at the end. The Big Blue specifically references the death of a free diver who can't handle real life. The death of Leon is a mirror image of the ending of The Big Blue, with Leon's drop down the dark stairway and hallway at the end with a smile on his face. Subway ends with the hero dying with a smile on his face and a bullet to the head. Nikita drops into oblivion.
Mathilda, however, survived. Portman's ebullient spirit seemed to have enabled Besson to exorcize his demon in the revised narrative he created for her. Leelou in The Fifth Element, was created before this film and her version of the athletic alien to normal life also survived in the later film. Later narratives were more about the regular human world, no longer running from it.
In the end, it's a good movie. But the scene with Mathilda running down the hall in her underwear has to go. The other bits of sublimation were tolerable and were it not for that scene I probably wouldn't have watched with as much scrutiny. But that's too blatant. She could have been wearing more clothes and advanced the plot just the same.
Is this to be an empathy test?
I have over 700 friends on Facebook, most with families and frequent posts of their kids in many different situations no less revealing than what Besson showed. I'm sure that most of them would be horrified if they thought any of the friends who they allowed to view these photos was turned on by the images.
The context that I never see is of an adult leering at a child and that behavior being applauded. To me, that distinction is the proper boundary, and I don't think Besson crossed it.
I have over 700 friends on Facebook, most with families and frequent posts of their kids in many different situations no less revealing than what Besson showed.
Whether they know it, filmmakers are exploiting children. Whether they know it, "Dance Mom's" are exploiting their children. And WHETHER THEY KNOW IT, Facebookers are exploiting their children. It's atrocious to parade one's kids in front of the world in such a manner. I've said that from day one about FB and I can't believe you would support such content. That alone tells me we have no ground for discussion and I'm sorry I ever engaged on this matter. Goodbye.
it's called the Electra complex, little girl reaching puberty falls in love with fatherly figure (could be the father himself, a teacher or protector), Léon never fell in love with her, he saw more as a daughter than anything, I don't see what is so taboo about that, happens to pretty much every girl in existence
shareThere is a love interest, but it's not an easily categorized one-which is one great aspect of this movie.
Mathilda probably has a more sexual oriented (obviously with that dress scene near the end) love for Leon, but it's still very emotionally based. Leon has a love for her that really can't be placed exactly. This is a man who has been emotionally dead for decades, just saying he's a pedo is utterly missing the point.
The point is, is that they both found a loving human being in each other even though they are steeped in blood and misery, and despite huge differences physically and even emotionally.
There is SOME implied love interest, but they don't take it too far. I don't think you should brand the movie "pedophilic" OR the people who are disturbed by the relationship either. People are generally too hysterical about this subject. (Yes, especially in America, and I'm American). I simply don't find a 12-year-old Natalie Portman sexually attractive, so even if she had a shower scene I wouldn't care one way or another. But as for Maiwenn Lebesco. . .
There are 16-year-old girls who look 25 easily. Lebesco was one and she was (and is) stunning. Her younger sister, Isild, has a similar look and has been doing nude scenes in French films since she was 17 (and if the boner I have for her is wrong, I don't want to be right). It was probably not very MORAL for Besson to have a relationship with a girl that young, but I would reckon 97 percent of men would be attracted to a 16-year-old Lebesco where maybe 3 percent would be SEXUALLY attracted (she was obviously always pretty) to a 12-year-old Portman. The latter group could legitimately be branded "pedophiles", but if you're attracted to voluptuous, PHYSICALLY MATURE females, whatever their chronological age, that really just means you're a straight male. Please don't equate the two.
If Besson had "impregnated" Portman, you would definitely have a point, but this is exactly what I mean when I say people get hysterical about this subject.
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