An important thing to remember for the less attentive follower of the French cinema is that Luc Besson (the director of this English-language production) is not Luc Beraud. The second of these Lucs made a quite good little film called Like a Turtle on Its Back. The first one made a simply dreadful little film called Subway. He fares no better under water than he did under ground. Actually the worst of it is not the underwater stuff (which inevitably puts one in mind of his fellow French cinéaste Jacques Cousteau, hardly a name to stand alongside Resnais, Godard, Truffaut), but rather whenever it comes up for air. That air is unbearably hot. The story, in whose writing five different people had a hand, tells of a sort of human cousin to the dolphins ("This is my family," he says, opening his wallet to a delphine snapshot), who overcomes his sense of outsiderism long enough to enter some Free Diving Championships and rekindle a rivalry with his boyhood friend. The latter is purely and merely human, so he is soon literally out of his depth. There's also a sort of romantic rivalry between a groupie from New York and the fishes whose claim on the hero is more mysterious than hers: "I'm here! I'm real! I exist!" Since she's played by Rosanna Arquette, who seems to wish she were in a Frankie Avalon surfing picture instead, there's no competition there either. With Jean-Marc Barr and Jean Reno. (1988) — Duncan Shepherd