OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies

OSS 117 was fun from start to finish.

It's difficult to define why one film touches or connects with you or not, and I won't try to analyze such perfect comedy, so politically incorrect that even academic papers should be dedicated to it :)!

Everything is old fashioned here, from women's clothes (sigh!), Mambo dance, the "hero singing"... ("Bambino" sounds like an Italian canzonetta sung in... arabic :)!).

Hubert is physically imposing, but dumb as hell. From all the 007s, he looks like Sean Connery, but is definitely more sympa because he's... silly, speaks his mind all the time, giggles, even has some homoerotic fantasies and there are rumours about him. In short, as an anti hero, he rocks :)! Sometimes he only raises his eyebrows or frowns, and that's all it takes to make you laugh.

Bérénice Bejo is the true queen of the film. Graceful, treacherous but with ideals. Aure Atika, to the contrary, is reduced to a femme fatale of sorts. It's surprising to see her that "sexy bomb", thou.

You just can't compare it with "Austin Powers"! I agree with Amazon's D. Hartley (Seattle, WA) on it being respectful to the genre.

Which is your favourite scene? One of my favourite scenes is the "fight of the chickens" with the masked villain. But the truly perfect one is when chatting at the cocktail with his contacts, how they all mutter platitudes with confidence... This scene alone makes the comedy genre worthwhile.

Jean Dujardin gets Connery's mannerisms down pat: the adjusting the cuff links when entering a club as all the women turn to admire him, the nonchalant straightening and smoothing down of the tie, the swaggering, steely gait. It's uncanny, and you come to realise just how much of Bond in the Sixties was Connery's creation and not really Ian Fleming's character.

The cinematography is a nod to those early films, the movie takes off From Russia With Love and Thunderball mainly. The main joke is how chauvinistic the hero is, not just in terms of sexism but nationalism and colonialism, and how he puts noses out of joint when he is sent to Egypt.

It's not perfect - about 20 mins in it seems a one-joke movie and bits of it remind one of spoofs of the day, of which there were plenty. Morcecambe and Wise's The Intelligence Men had suspect-looking men in fez's following their heroes around too, and that's going back a bit. Unlike Sellers' Clouseau or Baron Cohen's Borat, Dujardin doesn't give his character that layer of realness or genuine pathos - he is too busy perfecting his Connery mannerisms. It doesn't do enough with the credits or a big song, and there's no funny or serious villain, like Mike Myers' Dr Evil or Ricardo Montalban's Naked Gun nemesis, for the hero to go up against.

But the scene where OSS117 wakes up in Cairo one morning had me laughing out loud in the three-quarters empty cinema, and the whole thing looks wonderful, plus you'll never get a chance to see Operation Kid Brother on the screen, and the women are ace crumpet, really hot. It's a Bond spoof without falling into the mad scientist/Ken Adam sets or funny gadgets routine. Throughly recommended.

Excellent exercise on multiple plans:

• showing the not yet ended colonialism spirit in France

• more generally the boring mindset of superiority from all western people

• a renewal of the spy and thriller movies: OSS 117 is uncultured and stupid!

The good idea is that, in spite of all these messages, it is a funny film, plenty of jokes and gags, very light and sparkling.

Special mention to Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo.

Definitely worth seeing. Wonder how it will be appreciated in US?

Seems to be a success in France, so probably a next version will come.

I just saw this film last night, and I have to say that I loved every minute. If taken in the spirit of a parody of Bond-esquire films, it's truly superior. The true comedy of the film is in its blatant disregard for political correctness. The misogyny, cultural insensitivity, and almost laughable macho-ism of the films of this genre are used for major comic effect. It also calls the illogic and formulaic elements to task, with Agent OSS 117 constantly learning difficult things insanely quick (such as Arabic and how to play a traditional instrument) while missing some pathetically obvious clues. Some of the lines from the film left me laughing for hours after the movie was finished...and I have to say I have learned some...interesting...French vocabulary that would probably have my Professors quite exasperated with me were I to use. All in all, I thought this film excellent. Intensely funny and the first film I've ever seen that truly parodies all aspects of the spy film.

Just saw the movie, it's actually pretty good. The trailers'd left me an impression of either yet another Dujardin one-man-show-turned-film (à la _Brice de Nice_) or an expensive, stupid French comedy. Surprisingly, it's neither. Secret agent OSS 117 is stupid, but at least he sort of knows it, whereas I've always found that James Bond was stupid but acted like a smart arse. Dialogue is witty with a lot of tongue-in-cheek humour that one would expect from a British rather than a French movie. The women and the music are beautiful. A refreshing trip into the past, when the bad guys were ex-Nazis or Soviet brutes, cars were shiny, and France had colonies!