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Dante 01

Dante 01

Movie · 2008 · 11 people

The French director Marc Caro made the 2008 science-fiction film Dante 01, his first without his former partner Jean-Pierre Jeunet, with whom he created The City of Lost Children and Delicatessen. Caro wrote the script with the novelist Pierre Bordage. It mixes sci-fi with prison drama and noir in a dystopian, comic-book-like look. The budget was about eight million dollars, and it runs 82 minutes. It opened in France on January 2, 2008, and in Turkey on September 5, 2008.

The action takes place on a space station orbiting a fiery planet named Dante. The station is both a prison and a psychiatric center where dangerous criminals serve as volunteer test subjects in nanotechnological human experiments. Seven prisoners, three administrators and two doctors live there. Saint Georges, the lone survivor of a shipwreck, is brought in and soon shows healing abilities, so that those around him begin to see him as a miracle worker. Lambert Wilson plays Saint Georges, with Linh-Dan Pham as Elisa, Simona Maicanescu as Perséphone and Dominique Pinon as César.

Raphaël Elig composed the music. Critics found the film wanting, faulting its forced religious metaphors, heavy-handed philosophising and below-par visuals.

DirectorMarc Caro
Dante 01 Dante 01 Dante 01

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Yunus Emre Yıldırımer Yunus Emre Yıldırımer Actor · 44 years old Lambert Wilson Dominique Pinon Linh-Dan Pham François Hadji-Lazaro Bruno Lochet Dominique Bettenfeld François Levantal Gérald Laroche Yann Collette Gaspar Noé

Also in the cast: Simona Măicănescu (Perséphone)

More from this director

Through different eyes

Cinephile Looks at script, editing and directing choices; keeps a distance from formula films.

As Marc Caro's first film without Jeunet, Dante 01 faces an unavoidable comparison: one looks for the visual inventiveness of Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children here too. The comic-book dystopian design and the approach blending prison drama with noir make an interesting starting point. The problem, as critics also pointed out, is that the allegory gets ahead of the characters. The miracle-working figure of Saint Georges carries religious imagery so openly that after a while the narrative stops telling its own story and starts telling its message. A strong idea for an atmosphere, but the dramatic structure is not sturdy enough to carry it.

Action & Thriller Fan Puts pace, tension and set pieces first; little patience for slow drama.

The setup is great: a sealed station orbiting a fiery planet, dangerous prisoners and doctors experimenting on them. There's nowhere to run and anyone could be anyone's enemy. Sadly the film doesn't fully exploit that tension; heavy philosophising keeps cutting into the pace. Fans of closed-space sci-fi can give it a look, but don't expect constant tension.

History & Society Lens Asks about the period, the social background and what the work reflects.

Beneath Dante 01's premise lies an uncomfortable question: what does volunteering mean in an experimental center where dangerous criminals serve as 'volunteer' test subjects? Merging a prison and a psychiatric center under one roof depicts a world where the lines between punishment, treatment and scientific experiment blur. A community waiting for a saviour promptly hailing the stranger in its midst as a miracle worker is also a striking observation about desperate people's need for faith. Though the film sometimes handles these themes in too heavy a language, it offers interesting ground for thinking about human experimentation and prisoners' rights.

These are not reader reviews: they are short editorial takes written from different viewer perspectives with AI assistance. Reader reviews are below.

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