The Empire Strikes Out
Two new films peek into imperial bedrooms
By Andy Klein
From the country that brought you Godard and Resnais! ... Children of Paradise and The Grand Illusion! ... Sartre and Genet! ... comes OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies! – which may just be the silliest movie I’ve ever seen.
I mean that in the best way: Frankly, they had me at the title.
OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies is a deliberately retro spy thriller, located on the reality scale a tad closer to The Pink Panther than to Top Secret! – with a hero a good deal closer on the stupidity scale to Maxwell Smart than James Bond.
Based on a series of 250-plus novels written by Jean Bruce (and then by his widow and then by their children), Michel Hazanavicius’s broad farce centers on Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath (Jean Dujardin), a former OSS agent of Gallic descent, now (that is to say, 1955) working for the French government under the code name “OSS 117.” Hubert is suave, brilliant, and sexually irresistible ... at least in his own mind.
In the minds of most of the other characters, he is inexcusably arrogant and provincial, with a condescending attitude toward women and other cultures that gives new depth to the various meanings of “chauvinism.” So of course his superiors send him to Egypt, where his utter ignorance of things Arab and Muslim is sure to cause disaster.
Hubert is supposed to investigate the disappearance of his former partner Jack (Philippe Lefèbvre), who has been undercover in Cairo posing as the head of SCEP (Societe Cairote d’Elevage de Poulets, a.k.a. Cairo Chicken Breeding Company). His contact is the sultry Larmina (Bérénice Béjo), whom he constantly manages to offend. “You’re very ... French,” she tells him at one point, which he mistakenly assumes to be a compliment.
The main comic mechanism driving Cairo, Nest of Spies is the tension between the Western cultural assumptions of its period and our perspective on them 50 years later. It inevitably evokes, and comments on, the Bond movies, the universal touchstone of the genre. In Goldfinger, it seemed – in terms of the dominant culture in 1964 – really cool and studly when 007 saved the world by “converting” lesbian Pussy Galore to healthy, upright heterosexuality through his mighty prowess (or size or something). Forty years later, even Goldfinger’s most rabid fans – count me among them – have to wince at this one plot device. (Even 10 years later, it was wince-worthy.) One can imagine OSS 117 trying the same thing, being rebuffed, and failing to see the look of utter loathing on the woman’s face.
But we see it. OSS 117 views the characters around him through the eyes of a Eurocentric colonialist circa 1955, while we react to them with hindsight sharpened by the Algerian revolution, Vietnam, the crumbling of the British and French empires, and, yes, even the lessons of our current imperial blundering in Iraq. When OSS 117 “shuts up” a muezzin calling for prayer because it strikes him as incredibly rude for some old man to disturb his sleep with nonsensical caterwauling, are we that far from the misunderstandings and bullheaded stupidity detailed in Redacted?
I’d hate to overload such a goofy flick with heavy interpretation. Even as it derives much of its humor from the contrast between OSS 117’s perspective and our own, it also gets a lot of mileage from mocking other elements of its genre. In addition to Bondish music and ’60s-style animated credits, the filmmakers have gone to nearly ridiculous lengths to reproduce the look of its forebears, researching what lenses and film stocks were used in the early Bond movies and in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest and The Man Who Knew Too Much, both of which are consciously invoked. (Likewise, a pre-credit sequence about Hubert and Jack’s World War II experiences looks like Casablanca, presented in black-and-white with antique studio logos.)
Regardless of its interesting thematic concerns, the main goal here is yuks and boffs. Hazanavicius and his collaborators haven’t hesitated to go outside the genre spoof for laughs: Every time his ex-partner is mentioned, Hubert has flashbacks to their jolly days together, playing and wrestling nearly nude on the beach – in (Hubert would certainly insist) a strictly manly, heterosexual, Sean Connery way. And there is another incredibly dumb gag that is so funny it is repeated several times ... and could have been repeated a few more times without losing its potency.
Dujardin has the same blank handsomeness as Hitchcock veterans John Gavin (Psycho) and Frederick Stafford (Topaz), both of whom played OSS 117 in the ’60s, but he sweetens it with a flash of Jean-Paul Belmondo’s crooked grin. He pulls off the considerable feat of keeping us tolerant of the most culturally insensitive lout in the world.
The subject of colonialism gets a much heavier – and less interesting – workout from director/cinematographer Santosh Sivan (The Terrorist) in Before the Rains, which is so much in the vein of Merchant/Ivory productions (Heat and Dust, The Golden Bowl) that it’s no surprise the company got involved in its release. Linus Roache (Priest, Batman Begins) stars as Henry Moores, a thirtysomething Englishman with ambitious plans to build a road to a spice-rich mountainous region in India. But it’s 1937, and the native populace is beginning to clamor for independence from the British Empire.
Moores’s strength lies in his trusting relationship with his foreman, T.K. (Rahul Bose), born in a local village but educated in English-speaking schools. T.K. is the classic man in the middle – optimistically embracing the modernization represented by Europe, while trying not to disown or dishonor the traditions of his village.
Moores’s weakness lies in his covert relationship with Sajani (Nandita Das), his housekeeper. While his wife (Jennifer Ehle) and son (Leopold Benedict) are visiting London, he has fallen in love – or perhaps only in lust – with Sajani, who is most certainly in love with him. But Sajani is married, and she will be executed if her infidelity is discovered.
This is familiar turf from any number of oft-adapted W. Somerset Maugham works, like The Letter and The Painted Veil, except that, despite Bose’s second billing, the focus is on T.K.; Moores serves more as a plot device to push T.K. into an increasingly untenable position.
The first third is frankly plodding, though the story begins to engage us by the midpoint. While there is nothing wrong with Roache’s or Das’s work, Bose’s performance gives it whatever power it has.
What is more interesting than the film itself is its history: It may feel like Maugham, but it was adapted from an episode in a 2001 Israeli anthology film. The original had to do with an Israeli farmer and his Bedouin employees. That it translates so readily to India seven decades ago says volumes.
OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies. Directed by Michel Hazanavicius. Written by Jean François Halin; adaptation and dialogue by Jean François Halin and Michel Hazanavicius; based on the OSS 117 novels by Jean Bruce. With Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Béjo, Aure Atika, and Philippe Lefèbvre.
Opens Friday at the Nuart.
Before the Rains. Directed by Santosh Sivan. Screenplay by Cathy Rabin; based on the film Red Roofs, part of The Desert Trilogy: Yellow Asphalt
by Dany Verete. With Linus Roache, Rahul Bose, Nandita Das, Jennifer Ehle, John Standing, and Leopold Benedict. Opens Friday at the Landmark West Los Angeles, Laemmle’s Sunset 5, Laemmle’s Playhouse 7, and Laemmle’s Fallbrook 7.
Published: 05/07/2008
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