Möbius (2013)

An FSB officer falls in love with his agent, an American woman, who works as a trader in a Russian bank.

Director:

Eric Rochant

Writer:

Eric Rochant (screenplay)

Stars:

Jean Dujardin, Cécile de France, Tim Roth

1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Jean Dujardin	...	Moïse
Cécile de France	...	Alice (as Cécile De France)
Tim Roth	...	Ivan Rostovsky
Émilie Dequenne	...	Sandra
John Lynch	...	Joshua
Maksim Vitorgan	...	Sobchak (as Maxim Vitorgan)
Brad Leland	...	Agent CIA Möbius
Branka Katic	...	Ava
Dean Constantin	...	Collègue Joshua
Prasanna Puwanarajah	...	Saïd
Wendell Pierce	...	Bob
John Scurti	...	Honey
Michael Shannon	...	Le père d'Alice (as Michael J. Shannon)
Pierre Baux	...	Birnbaum
Vicky Krieps	...	Olga

Storyline

In the high stakes world of espionage, one Russian FSB operative will do whatever it takes to crack an international money laundering operation and American banker, Alice, is the key. The only problem is that he isn't the only one after Alice. Now he must find out who he can trust and use everything he knows in order to get to the truth and bring down a powerful Russian oligarch.

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Plot Keywords:

espionage | heliport | yacht | newspaper | oligarch | 

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Genres:

Drama | Thriller

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for sexuality, brief graphic nudity, and language

Details

Official Sites:

Official Facebook

Country:

France Belgium Luxembourg

Language:

French English Russian

Release Date:

27 February 2013 (France)

Also Known As:

Agentu zaidimai

Filming Locations:

Belgium

Box Office

Budget:

$16,000,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Récifilms, Axel Films, Les Productions du Trésor

Technical Specs

Runtime:

103 min

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The Moscow café where the confrontation between Alice, Moise and the CIA takes place is called "U Erika" ("Chez Eric"), as seen in Russian on the sign when Moise walks in. Eric is the first name of the director.

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Soundtracks

Stop
Written by Olga Kouklaki
Performed by Olga Kouklaki
Courtesy of Kwaidan Records

User Reviews

Too complicated for its own good.

It doesn't happen often, but once in a while, it's possible for a film to be both under- and over-cooked at the same time. Writer-director Eric Rochant's Möbius is a case in point. The double-crossed romance at its heart flirts with being fascinating but doesn't quite get there, buried as it is within the conspiracy-laden, high-stakes world of big business and covert intelligence.

While monitoring the offshore activities of crooked Russian tycoon Ivan Rostrovsky (Tim Roth), Russian secret agent Gregory Lioubov (Jean Dujardin) talent-spots Alice Redmond (Cecile De France), a brilliant international banker so spectacular she was banned from working in America after the Lehman Bros scandal. Not realising that Alice is already working with the CIA, Gregory directs his team to recruit and use her to get closer to Rostrovsky. Inevitably, secrets and conspiracies pile up, with Gregory only complicating matters when he stumbles into a forbidden relationship with Alice.

There are a few moments and ideas that shine through Möbius, no doubt the ones that most inspired Rochant to construct a script around them. These come mainly in the relationship between Alice and Gregory – or Moses, as she knows him. Their connection is under-written, suggested more through soul-shuddering orgasms than what is technically in the script. Nevertheless, Dujardin and de France just about make it work, whether Gregory is brazenly deceiving his colleagues to answer a call from Alice or they're sharing a final, quietly devastating scene together.

But their efforts are let down by an overly complicated plot, one that feels as if it doesn't make much sense even when all is revealed. The motivations of every agency involved are murky at best. The CIA comes off the worst, its agents lurking stupidly through a handful of scenes as their ties with Alice ebb and flow in quite mysterious fashion. The Americans in the cast must also grapple with the unwieldy, soapy chunks of dialogue they're given. As a result, the film loses steam when it should gain tension.

A Möbius strip, as a character explains quite late in the film, is a deceptively simple phenomenon. Half-twist a strip of paper, fasten the two ends together, et voila: something utterly simple rendered impossibly complicated – a never-ending loop, a two-dimensional model with only one surface. Rochant meant for the strip to be a metaphor for the dilemma in which his characters find themselves. It's rather appropriate, though perhaps not quite how he intended it, that the strip also serves as an apt metaphor for the entire film.