Whatever your opinion of Luc Besson as a filmmaker or screenwriter, it is difficult to deny he’s long had a je ne said quoi for creating memorable female characters. Consider Mathilda, the precocious pre-teen assassin’s apprentice, played so seductively by Natalie Portman in Léon (a.k.a. The Professional), which launched the actress’s career in 1994.  But at least for me, one of Besson’s most fanciful, fiercest, and most uncompromisingly bad-ass action anti-heroines was the dystopian Banlieue gang leader, Tao—a comparatively minor character, played by Elodie Yung, at the time an unknown actress, in Besson’s rather less than critically acclaimed 2009 District 13 sequel.

While Yung only appears for the final twenty minutes of the movie, she steals the show hands down, with a stylishly feral sangfroid, sinister intensity, and a boldly confident sensuality. Her hair piled into a messy bun—or when she let it down, her thick braided locks flourished as a lethal weapon with a steel razor fastened to the end—her face and forehead, neck and forearms are adorned with an indecipherable arabesque of black tattoos. And she is utterly convincing as a shrewd, charismatic sociopath for whom killing is a everyday event, and hand-to-hand combat very much her idea of pleasure. Chilling to be sure, but rarely has bad, on the big screen, looked half so good. Continue reading New interview to Monrowe Magazine