Good film! It’s where Enter the Dragon lifted its famous mirror scene from 
Also it was one of Welles’ films which was heavily cut against his will 
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I will be watching this in my spare time and only hope it turns out to be remotely similar to the poster.
Was thinking about watching Leon The Professional, and just now came across the stories that circled the net a few years back about the original script by Besson which featured a sex scene between Leon and Mathilda, which Portman’s parents made him cut out… you can find the actual script part online, and its pretty bad… bad writing even aside from the content…
Apparently one of Besson’s past marriages was to a 15 year old girl, who has since said that the film was partially based on their relationship…
Never knew any of this… 
His second wife, Maïwenn Le Besco. In France the age of consent is 15.
Always found this overrated, pretentious and seedy.
I concur!
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Still, they were married when she was 15… usually a relationship is formed prior to marriage…
And Portman in the film is like 12 years old I think. From what I read, Besson was specifically going for this age as he turned down Liv Tyler who was 15 (although could have been other reasons)
Putting a child of 12 years old in a film doing a sex scene with a grown man is pretty f’d up. Its one thing to write about it, if you’re writing about characters with f’d up lives, but putting an actual kid into the situation is a different thing.
I’ll probably always love the film… I managed to see it at the theater at release, when I was the same age as Portman, and it had a big effect on me. My dad was pretty pissed off he had taken me to see it and I didn’t understand at the time 
I can understand viewing it as pretentious, but there are many great scenes and the ending is very powerful for me
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That about sums it up for me - This one was pushed hard by the distributors and was very popular at the time … I wondered why no one I knew was commenting on the inappropriate ‘Lolita’ scenes … perhaps it wasn’t cool to criticize a big name director? But it felt like the exploitation was deliberately there to cause controversy. Now it sounds as though the director was playing out his own sexual fantasy … especially as it’s the young girl who’s coming on to the simpleminded middle aged man.
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yeah the full scene is pretty bad… and comes across as clearly sexual fantasy of the kind a dude into kids would write
most of the articles just clip a small segment of the script, but the full thing is also available
and being that he was in the relationship with the girl at the same time as writing the film, and she says it was inspired by her…
Haven’t watched Leon but I remember watching David Hamilton’s Kissing Cousins and wondering how he got away with it. The actors were obviously underage. Interesting that his work is regarded as child pornography in the UK but praised in France.
Those Dirty Dogs
Can’t say I’ve read great things about this one, but I love me some Garko.
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I am watching the first Sartana film on blu-ray with the Mike Siegel commentary.
I actually really like this one. I put it in my alternative top 20.
It wasn’t bad, I liked Garko’s character. The third act seemed like a remake of The Professionals (1966).
Having myself a mini automobiliathon. Four films today, four tomorrow.
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