The Odyssey (French title: L’odyssée) is a 2016 French–Belgian biographical adventure film directed by Jérôme Salle and written by Salle and Laurent Turner, based on the non-fiction book Capitaine de La Calypso by Albert Falco and Yves Paccalet. The film stars Lambert Wilson, Pierre Niney, and Audrey Tautou.
The film follows Jacques-Yves Cousteau, a French ocean-going adventurer, biologist, and filmmaker. It sticks to historical events, and was based on documentation and interviews with people who worked with Cousteau.
n 1949, Cousteau was an eccentric naval officer in France, with a beautiful oceanside house, who wanted to be a pilot. But he quits the Navy to explore and document the ocean. His boat, Calypso, was a 1941 minesweeper. The film is a biopic covering aquatic adventures over thirty years. Cousteau is revealed to be an adventurer but also an inventor. He designed the autonomous regulator, but also had romantic views of colonising the sea.
in the Caribbean.