Dreamwatch
November '97, Issue 39
Cherchez La Femme
In the midst of the rush to do a cinematic makeover of every remotely popular television series, Kathleen Toth pauses to pay homage to a rare success of the reverse impulse - La Femme Nikita a television series that spins off from a film. Or, in this case two films ...
It may have taken Xena to make the point with international clarity, but the Nineties seem destined to be the decade of tough female action heroines. Luc Besson enjoyed a modest hit in 1991 with Nikita, a hard-edged, kinky romantic thriller about a drug addict who kills a cop in a raid on a pharmacy and is executed for her crime. Or so it appears. Actually, the condemned Nikita awakens to find that the afterlife for her is a temporary reprieve of sorts working for a secret government program that will turn her street tough aggressiveness into professional skills as a trained assassin after faking her death. After three years of grooming by her organizational mentor, the junky wild child is transformed into a stylish, attractive woman capable of charming a target long enough to get close for the kill.
From there the story spins between the unstated mutual fascination that exists between the Eliza Doolittle-like Nikita and her mentor in sanctioned violence, and Nikita's gradually awakened yearning to live a real life free of the organisation as she takes a lover who knows nothing about her secret vocation. The French Nikita was tough as nails and obviously doomed to a bad end - but the film caught the attention of Hollywood, which wanted to remake the story rather than purchase the film. The American version of Nikita rolled out to theatres in 1993 with cult favourite Bridget Fonda going through the transformation from vicious cop killer to polished upper crust assassin under the titles 'Point of No Return/The Assassin'.
Four years later a Canadian production company has assembled a multi-national cast that makes a television series called La Femme Nikita, which has premiered to critical praise and a growing audience spreading overseas from the United States and Canada, where the first 22 episodes is just concluding. part Fugitive, part The Prisoner, part a darkly twisted Man From Uncle, this Nikita rocks to a music beat and parades a happening fashion sense, but tells a story in which the good guys are often barely distinguishable from the scum they are sworn to eradicate. With the exception, that is, of our Nikita.
The producers of this series, which films in Toronto while being vaguely situated somewhere in the United States, have a background in such shows as Miami Vice, Wiseguy and Nowhere Man, which shows in the style and moral ambiguity that assaults the viewer each week. But they are also extremely shrewd about what works in television, as opposed to sardonic French films. Producer Joel Surnow says, "I loved the movie, but I felt it was very exotic. I think in doing a weekly series, your main character has to be heroic, even if it's a twisted heroic. She needs to be a character the audience can embrace. I see Nikita as a person trying to hold onto her humanity."
For Nikita they cast an unknown and largely untested Australian actress, Peta Wilson, which has proven to be as prescient a choice as Lucy Lawless for Xena. Wilson, a tall blonde who got her unusual name because her parents were expecting a boy, called herself Pete and devoted her adolescence to sports, making the Australian national team in basketball before deciding it was time to develop her feminine wiles. This took her into modeling - and also a bout with anorexia.
At 26, she now finds herself camped out in Toronto, with her grandmother along to take care of her and see she eats properly. Before starting the filming, she says, "I worked out with an ex-marine on combat techniques and stunts. Now I work with a trainer and do yoga every day." Besides producing convincing killer moves, Wilson brings a startling variety of looks to the endless parade of different styles Nikita wears to the office and on the job (when she is not kitted up in commando gear for a midnight raid). She manages to look innocent and seductive, coltish and sophisticated by turns, while pulling a gun with authority, making her the most talked about secret agent/fashion model since Diana Rigg put peelers on the map.
Wilson's Nikita is an angel in wolf's clothing, the one person who retains a compassionate nature beneath the hard exterior her survival demands. The creators of La Femme Nikita decided that television viewers could not become attached to the adventures of an amoral hitwoman. So, Nikita Samuelle has become an unwanted child who runs away from her abusive mother to a hard life living on the streets. One night she is in the wrong place at the wrong time, and is unjustly accused of a murder she only witnessed when she tried to help the victim.
Convicted, she is brought into the super secret Section One by a man named Michael (Roy Dupuis), who tells her that her only options are to try to pass their training course to become an operative, or to accept her sentence as a convicted murderer. Michael grooms her for two years in weapons and martial arts; her scruffy image is made over by Madeline (Alberta Watson), Section One's master strategist and resident pyschologist.
Nikita is continually warned that failure will mean that she will be 'cancelled'; any attempt to escape Section One will have the same result. To add to her burdens, she and Michael exchange many meaningful looks but never speak of their feelings, although he often seems to act in ways that might be designed to protect her - yet always turn out to have multiple possible interpretations. All of them work under the watchful eye of Operations (Eugene Robert Glazer), a completely humourless and demanding taskmaster prepared to sacrifice everyone - himself included, if necessary - to complete a mission.
As Nikita informs us each week in the prologue, [sidenote here, in the UK on Channel 5 we don't get the 'I was wrongly accused of a hideous crime and sentenced ... blah ...blah ... by Nikita each week, so I guess the author of this doesn't actually watch the show in the UK.] Section One's ends are just, but their means are ruthless - and quite outside the law. Enemies are routinely kidnapped and drugged or tortured for information. Once drained of useful knowledge they are discared like last weeks newspaper. If that is not chilling enough, innocent witnesses and well intentioned outsiders who may learn too much about Section One are also slated for cancellation. Nikita must somehow make her way through each situation, mindful of the importance of stopping terrorist plots to bomb cities, crash planes, poison water supplies, steal powerful new weapons technologies, or enslave homeless children, while trying to shield good people from the harsh efficiency of Section One's operating rules - and keep an eye out for any possible avenue for her own escape from a life she never chose while working under the baleful gaze of Operations, who does not trust her.
Michael is played by Roy Dupuis, a major star and sex symbol in Canada, who has few lines but a palpable presence as the inscrutable mentor. Madeline is quite aware that on order to sacrifice or cancel Nikita will pose a personal crisis for this key operative, but neither she nor Nikita is sure how he will react.
As the season wears on, Nikita refuses to allow Operations totally eradicate her moral concerns, but she comes to be aware that everything said to the much more approachable Madeline will end up as an entry in her dossier with an analysis of its significance. But Nikita has not been simply redone as a displaced social worker. When the chips are down, she reacts with cool professionalism to save herself and her teammates. She does not always like this capability, but Madeline remarks that it proves something she has known all along - that "you are one of us".
Sooner or later it seems certain that Nikita will have to flee the Section or accept that she does, indeed, belong here with people who can coolly snip off a man's fingers one by one until he gives them what they want ...