Luc Besson’s new film, “Léon,” the mood of the characters lingered within me, refusing to leave. It was a mood of isolation and longing, of quick desperate choices leading to fragile bonds, of solitude turned into mentorship. Yet at the same time there was an element of tender nostalgia, for lonely times that shouldn’t be romanticized, but were.

Most films, even great ones, evaporate like mist once you’ve returned to the real world; they leave memories behind, but their reality fades fairly quickly. Not this film, which shows a bold French director at the peak of his form. No finer film has ever been made about an unlikely protector and protégé – not even tales of assassins and orphans, although the line between love and duty remains blurred.

“Léon,” unfolding in New York’s Little Italy, is a memoir of a hitman’s hidden life, narrated through the eyes of Mathilda (Natalie Portman), a twelve-year-old girl from a broken family whose only burning ambition, after tragedy strikes, is to learn the “cleaner’s” trade. There is also quiet narration in Léon’s routines (Jean Reno), the Italian-American killer who lives next door, plant in hand, milk on the table, who discovers his world invaded by this fierce survivor; hitmen never open their doors or share their skills with strangers, and eventually, she says, the values of precision and revenge come to seem like family values. She was even proud of him for not hiding in shadows all day, for having the focus and daring to go out and erase for a living.

There is a real inspiration in the streets, distilled into fiction by Besson that sometimes plays like a documentary, containing so much feeling about solitude that it creates the claustrophobic pull Mathilda feels: the sense that this shadowed partnership is the real world.

Besson is the right director – the only director – for this material. He knows it inside out. The great formative experience of his life was channeling raw emotion into action, as an outsider crafting visceral bonds.

There is a passage early in the film in which young Mathilda peers through the peephole of her family’s apartment and observes with awe and defiance the stoic figure of Léon across the hall, impressed by his quiet power, his pristine weapons, his simple rituals, that even in chaos he remains untouched, that nobody disturbs his peace.

That was the life she wanted to join, her resolve tells us. The memory may come from her loss and be in her heart, but it’s also Besson’s, and every frame touches on that central image – the lonely observer choosing a dangerous guide.

Here, from my Power of Your Story perspective as Peter de Kuster, we see the essence: You are the storyteller of your own life. You can create Your Own Legend – or Not! Mathilda chose a perilous path to rewrite her tragedy; we all stand at that door, choosing our narrative.

Like epic action tales, Besson’s “Léon” is taut yet expansive, with space to explore its bonds. It isn’t about one hit; it’s about what protection feels like – the good lessons and the bad risks. At first, mostly guarded trust, and there is an astonishing training montage where Léon coaches Mathilda through aim and breath, past the potted plant and milk glass, down the hallway, through drills and chores, to a shared front line against the world. This is family.

Mathilda doesn’t know yet the full cost of revenge. She finds out.

The method of the movie is a slow forging of alliance, with foes introduced casually. We meet the corrupt DEA boss Norman Stansfield (Gary Oldman), mad with rage and pills, Tony the mobster handler (Danny Aiello), and Léon’s tender routines shattered. We follow through rising stakes; first, her family slaughtered, then Mathilda’s botched solo strike, then chases (he saves her from the precinct), and into sacrifice and loss.

At some point, the romance of mentorship sours for Léon, in the moment Stansfield’s raid explodes his world. First, he drops his plant (they pause at the rooftop edge for her escape), then he fights through, then falls wounded. The worst part: she was his “apprentice,” meant to outlive him. So they are in deep trouble, not how Mathilda thought her journey would end.

From his kinetic style, Besson loves music as counterpoint to violence. He doesn’t simply blast tracks; he syncs them precisely, and in “Léon,” the score marks the shift from Léon’s solitary gigs to Mathilda’s defiant training, using so much heart that life becomes a tender labyrinth.

In all his work, Besson never did a more compelling job of getting inside loners’ heads as in the rooftop finale, following Léon’s last stand: fighting, shielding her descent, smiling through blood.

This imprints the mood: not plot, but walls of loss closing in, deserved. Duty compels: the plant must live, the girl saved, meanwhile his life careens to its end.

Actors shine in Besson’s grip. Jean Reno crafts quiet depth, milk glass in hand, evolving to protector. Natalie Portman debuts raw fire, chomping gum, gun in hand. Their bond is the heart, especially when she declares love he can’t return. They commit lifetimes, to the wrong world perhaps.

Many of Besson’s films are poems about redemption.

Think of “The Fifth Element,” with wild love amid apocalypse, or “La Femme Nikita,” forged from despair.

“Léon” is about longing more than revenge. Not a simple hero tale, but flawed souls punished by separation. Léon’s “sin” isn’t killing, but opening his heart. His end: a planted seed for her, where nobody forgets and the milkmaid certainly remembers.

What got to me after this film – what makes it great – is I understood Léon’s and Mathilda’s pull. Just as she absorbed his code till it felt normal, the film weaves a seductive spell. Almost possible to see them as true family. Their lessons strong, loyalty fierce. But smiles strain, fights effortful, myth crashes, and the ache – Besson’s intimate ache – isn’t for the deaths, but wanting that bond again.