> I don't know enough about the Merovingian reference to
> comment.
Merovingian is one of the subvillains in the latest Matrix flick, who recites tiresome cliches about causality, before being tripped up by his own cleverness, when his wife, Persephone, helps out the rebels (mostly just to see the look on Merovingian's face). The character has nothing to do with Chirac, incidentally, but is loosely based on the Francophone Turing Registry agents in William Gibson's "Neuromancer".
The cast has extraordinary real-world multinational/multicultural depth: Persephone is played by Italian actress Monica Belluci, hinting at the northern Italian industrial districts; Merovingian is played by French actor Lambert Wilson; Jada Pinkett Smith, Laurence Fishburne, Gloria Foster, Cornel West, Harold Perrineau and Harry Lennix are all African American; the Twins are real-life Brit brothers Neil & Adrian Rayment; Collin Chou, who plays the Seraph, was born in Taiwan; Keanu Reeves is from Canada; Hugo Weaving is from Australia; Randall Duk Kim, the Keymaker, was born and raised in Hawaii; and even Carrie-Ann Moss was born in Vancouver, Canada. Bios and more at:
http://whatisthematrix.warnerbros.com/
-- DRR