Nikita | 1990
- DIRECTOR |
- Luc Besson
The original film that spawned both a Hollywood remake (1993's Assassin / Point Of No Return, with Bridget Fonda) and a TV series was filmed around Paris, beginning with four punks – and their zonked-out friend – marching determinedly along the Quai de la Gare and under the Pont de Bercy toward the pharmacist they intend to rob.
Nikita (Anne Parillaud), the only survivor of the ensuing shoot-out with the cops, is given a hefty prison sentence but finds herself officially "dead" and held in a mysterious institution where is given the chance of a new life by being trained as an assassin.
The interior of the facility is one of the Seita company's old cigarette factories but the entrance and the courtyard are 244 Boulevard Saint-Germain in the 7th arrondissement on the Left Bank, which now houses the Ministry of Ecological Transition, Biodiversity, Forests, the Sea and Fisheries. And does not train government assassins. Ever. Honest.
Finally cooperating with the programme, and groomed by the enigmatic Amande (Jeanne Moreau), the accomplished Nikita is finally taken out by her handler Bob (Tchéky Karyo) for a meal in a startlingly grandiose restaurant. But there are strings attached to this birthday treat, which turns out to be her first deadly mission.
The opulent gilt restaurant is Le Train Bleu, located in the hall of the Gare de Lyon. It was created for the 1900 Exposition Universelle, self-effacingly called simply the Buffet de la Gare de Lyon. As you can see, it's a step up from your average railway station buffet and, in 1963, it was renamed Le Train Bleu after the famous Calais-Mediterranée Express.
The restaurant is also seen in George Cukor's film of Graham Greene's Travels With My Aunt and in Mr Bean's Holiday.
After leaving the facility and getting her own apartment, Nikita's first solo assignment involves passing herself off as a maid, delivering very special room service, in the Hotel Regina, 2 Place des Pyramides, facing the Louvre (Métro: Tuileries; Pyramides).
The hotel has made several screen appearances, most famously as the hotel where Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) discovers that his alter ego, John Michael Kane, has been staying in Doug Liman's The Bourne Identity.
Nikita's cosy life with partner Marco (Jean-Hugues Anglade) – who knows nothing of her past life – is disturbed when "Uncle Bob" turns up claiming to be a travel agent and gifting them an engagement present of two tickets for a break in Venice. Naturally, he has an ulterior motive.
We don't see a great deal of the city apart from the couple drifting blissfully through the canals, and no view at all of the hotel they stay at.
However, the first shot, establishing the locale, you may recognise as the Ponte dei Conzafelzi, the cast-iron bridge on which Ilsa fights Gabriel in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.
Back to Paris, Nikita becomes involved in a job with Victor the cleaner (Jean Reno) which goes nastily wrong. The 'embassy' she has to infiltrate is Hôtel Saint-James, 5 Place du Chancelier Adenauer, south of Avenue Foch in the 16th Arrondissement. Built in 1892 as a private residence and educational establishment, the five-star hotel occupies a prime spot, in its own walled grounds.
When the pair are rumbled and the gates are closed, Victor recklessly drives right through a brick wall – emerging from 70 Rue de la République, in the Puteaux district, some distance away on the other side of the Bois-de-Boulogne in Haute-de-Seine.
This is the last straw, and Nikita takes a chance to slip away into anonymity.
When Bob turns up to find out what's happened to her, we don't actually see her apartment, but he's on Rue Louis Codet at Rue Joseph Granier in the Invalides district, overlooked by the dome of the Hôtel des Invalides.
