It’s not a movie for deep plot, and it’s lacking in writing, which would normally ruin a movie for me. But gosh, the setting. It feels lived in. The future — it

It’s not a movie for deep plot, and it’s lacking in writing, which would normally ruin a movie for me. But gosh, the setting. It feels lived in. The future — its culture, its fashion, its transportation — it all feels bewildering in a way that the real future would be to us. It doesn’t bother to explain any of it either, because everyone in the future knows it. The audience is stuck there with Leeloo, having learned the word “multipass”. In a way it was a lot like my first time watching Spirited Away (a far better film) knowing next to nothing about Japanese culture. Everything about it seemed new and fantastical and like a wholly new setting. I can’t recapture that feeling now that I know a lot more Japanese culture, but The Fifth Element can retain that sense of a real but truly alien place and culture.