Marc Caro's Dante 01

After Jean-Pierre Jeunet made like a banana to do Alien Resurrection (a far smarter and more sophisticated film than Alien 3, and better than Aliens on almost every count, except, of course, Cameron's trademarked super smooth suspense-action hybrid mechanics), Delicatessen and City of Lost Children co-director Marc Caro disappeared from the world of feature films.

Now, however, the lastest issue of French Premiere is announcing his return with Dante 01.

According to Noel Megahey the film is a "dark science-fiction thriller" in which Lambert Wilson stars as "St. Georges, the sole survivor of a meeting between his spaceship and an alien entity."

Megahey goes on: "Found guilty of the death of his crew, St. Georges is imprisoned on Dante 01, a remote orbital space station housing six of the most dangerous criminals in the galaxy. However, St-Georges has been affected by his alien encounter and has a strange power that affects the brewing escape plots and power balance on the station."

Other reports call the film a cross between Cube and Gattaca, while one tells me that St. Georges' ship has an artificially intelligent computer onboard, and that this character plays a crucial role in the film. That these details aren't really mentioned by Noel Megahey perhaps hints at a particular twist ending, don't you think?

Sounds like good, solid genre stuff and I expect we can look forward to this film playing next year's Frightfest at least.

Dante 01 was originally to be called Mentasm (as in Mental Orgasm?). It was made on a very tight schedule with less than 8 million Euros in the kitty - just like so many more films should be.