The Big Blue

Plot

Childhood friends Jacques and Enzo share a passion for the danger of free diving. Jacques, following in the footsteps of his father, who died at sea when Jacques was a boy, harbors a remarkable ability to adjust his heart rate and breathing patterns in the water, with his vital signs more closely resembling those of dolphins than men.

About The Big Blue

The Big Blue (released in some countries under the French title Le Grand Bleu) is a 1988 drama film co-written and directed by Luc Besson. Inspired by the Cinéma du look movement, the film is a heavily fictionalized and dramatized story of the friendship and sporting rivalry between two leading contemporary champion free divers in the 20th century: Jacques Mayol (played by Jean-Marc Barr) and Enzo Maiorca (renamed "Enzo Molinari" and played by Jean Reno), and Mayol's fictionalized relationship with his girlfriend Johana Baker (played by Rosanna Arquette). The Big Blue became one of France's most commercially successful films (although an adaptation for US release was a commercial failure in that country). French president Jacques Chirac referred to the film in describing Mayol, after his suicide by hanging in 2001, as an enduring symbol for the "Big Blue" generation. The story was heavily adapted for cinema. In real life, Mayol lived from 1927 to 2001 and Maiorca retired from diving to politics in the 1980s. Both set no-limits-category deep diving records below 100 metres, and Mayol was indeed involved in scientific research into human aquatic potential, but neither reached 400 feet (120 metres) as portrayed in the film, and they were not direct competitors. Mayol himself was a screenwriter for the film, and Mayol's search for love, family, "wholeness" and the meaning of life…

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

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