I really love connectivity. I love the way things go round and you end up where they started. Its the seven degrees of Kevin Bacon. Its finding that a guy your friend met is the friend of another guy who was your best mate in 1973. And thus, the tale of Maiwenn.

Who?

Oh, Maiwenn, the French bird wot wrote, directed and stars in the new movie, Jeanne du Barry. Starring… Johnny Depp!!! OMG!!! Have we forgiven him yet? For… for… well, have we? Anyway, he’s in her film. She does have a surname but no-one uses it. No-one can pronounce her first name but its all she needs. Like Beyoncé, like Keanu, like Pele, like Lila, they only need one name. But its her appearance which is really amazing.

This picture was Maiwenn in 1997. She was blue. And had dangly things. And a fucking great head. And she sang a fantastic operatic pop song in The 5th Element movie. One of the 17 films in my all-time top 5. No idea why I like it because it is very silly. But Bruce Willis was… Bruce Willis, always amazing value. It had the oh-so-beautiful, naive and yet exceptionally dangerous Mila Jovovich, speaking gobbledygook, oh-so-beautifully. And it had Maiwenn.

Who was married, at the time, to the director, Luc Besson. Another reason I loved the movie, because Luc was pure class. His ‘Leon’ was a true classic. About a 12 year old Natalie Portman having her parents shot dead and falling into the care of a hit-man. The relationship between this beautiful child and Jean Reno’s weirdo hitman who was in love with a rubber-plant, was tantalisingly blurred at the edges.

And yet, Luc Besson was in a relationship with Maiwenn when she was 15. She had his child when she was 16. So in retrospect, Leon possibly had some kind of autobiographical resonance for Luc. I make no judgments. And the French lack certain ‘boundaries’ that more civilised people adhere to.

Maiwenn is no longer married to Luc, and is no longer blue. Maybe that’s why the marriage failed, when she changed colour. I don’t know. But she’s gorgeous in a highly toothsome way which doesn’t always look great in other nationalities, but is fab in French.

So that’s it. The director of a movie starring a ‘persona non grata’ for 3 years, was once a light blue opera singer in a film directed by her slightly perverted husband’s fabulous movie 26 years before, which I’ve loved ever since. And that makes me happy.

Never said I was ‘normal’.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx