(READ: TIME’s Review of the Besson-produced action film Taken)
It’s quite a stretch for Besson to imitate Bresson, but he tries. Though The Lady begins with a splatter of blood during the assassination of the heroine’s father Aung Sun, the architect of Burma’s independence from Britain, most of the film is a stately dual portrait of a long-distance love affair between Suu Kyi, imprisoned in her Rangoon home, and Michael fighting for her cause at Oxford University, where he raises their two sons while Mom is away trying to liberate her country from the lunatic junta.