Sabotage or espionage?  Transvergence in the works of Luc Besson

This article uses Marcos Novak's concept of transvergence in order to reframe the work of Luc Besson, both as director and as producer, since the turn of the century. Transvergence defines truth not as a continuous landmass, but as islands in an alien archipelago, sometimes only accessible by leaps, flights and voyages on vessels of artifice; transvergence sees the technological become inseparable from the cultural; transvergence also involves allogenesis – the creation of the alien-from-within. Having established ways in which Besson's films possess transvergent qualities (they are ambiguous; they deal with technology as culture; they feature spy-like aliens-from-within that cross literal and metaphorical borders and boundaries), the article then looks at how Besson is himself a transvergent figure. Besson is an ambiguous, spy-like film-maker who crosses borders, and whose 'Frenchness' or otherwise is continually scrutinized. Using first Jeanne d'Arc (1999) and Angel-A (2005), the paper then proposes that whilst Besson has a seemingly uneasy relationship with both Hollywood and French cinema, he is in many ways a French film-maker, and that the critical and commercial failure of Angel-A has, paradoxically, empowered him as such.