The Fifth Element doesn’t need what it has, a point Besson tweaks by having Jovovich’s character talk rapidly in a language that makes her sound as indecipherable as Geoffrey Rush in Shine. Le Dernier Combat, Besson’s 1984 debut film, had no dialogue. Why bother? The plot is too incoherent to give away. The 38-year-old Besson, who wrote the script with Robert Mark Kamen, has been working on the story since he was 16 and wants to protect the film’s surprises from blabbing critics. The Fifth Element, which just opened the Cannes Film Festival on its 50th anniversary, is a $90 million bonbon that is no less tasty for its being filled with hot air and fantasy. This Blade Runner on giggle gas is the handiwork of French director Luc Besson ( La Femme Nikita, The Professional), who takes a perversely giddy approach to matters that Hollywood epics overload with bogus gravity, such as the indigestible brotherhood message in Volcano. Even better, the scene makes you laugh out loud, right down to the sky ships peddling junk food. The scene is a dazzler, a take on Fritz Lang’s futuristic, silent-screen Metropolis for the digital age.

The year is 2259, and the midair speed chase around the canyons of Manhattan starts when a mystery babe (Milla Jovovich), dressed in what look like peekaboo Band-Aids, leaps from a ledge into Korben’s taxi. Korben Dallas, the hero who Willis plays in The Fifth Element, drives a cab that lifts off like a rocket. Picture a bottle-blond Bruce Willis as a New York cabbie with a fleet of squad cars riding his ass.

The fifth element