OSS 117 AMONG THE RIO HIPPIES

Play it again, Michel

Michel Hazanavicius again collaborates brilliantly and with no loss of comic energy with his star Jean Dujardin and co-writer Jean-François Halin in another film spoofing the novels and films of De Gaulle era, Bond-like French super-spy and politically incorrect ladies'-man Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath AKA OSS 117. Note, there were many serious films of the Jean Bruce-authored stories André Hunebelle directed, ending in 1970. Hazanavicius' versions, of which this is the second (the first was the 2006 Cairo, Nest of Spies), differ in being thoroughly tongue-in-cheek and deliberately foot-in-mouth. Hubert is embodied by the talented Dujardin, an essential element in the success of the films. He's often compared to Peter Seller's Clouzot, but Dujardin has more panache. In looks Dujardin resembles the Sean Connery version of James Bond, and his character is unfailingly charming, adept, and a complete fool whose racism and condescension toward women are further heightened in this episode, because the date is now no longer in the Fifties but 1967, when women now answer back.

The filmmakers were going to take Israel as their setting and include the Six-Day War, but including that historical event seemed too serious, so the decision was made to keep Jews in the picture but switch to Brazil, where Mossad agents could be tangling with (putatively ex) Nazis. Hazanavicius pushes the envelope more this time as Hubert insults not only the Chinese and Germans but Jews and women at the same time, when he teams up with Dolores (Louise Monot), a sexy Mossad lieutenant hunting down a Nazis organization plotting a Fifth Reich out of Rio. At one point Hubert suggests the Nazis should be allowed to have their own state -- "just like the Jews." Hubert's actual mission is to find the son of a Nazi general and get from him a microfilmed list of Frenchmen who collaborated with the Nazis. Hubert of course expects Dolores to be his secretary or his cook; he hasn't grasped the new role of women, and in fact goes into one of his maniacal laughs when someone suggests there could be better world coming than the one now.

The film is just as brilliant and loving a reproduction of slick Sixties technicholor B-adventure movies, with the widescreen look and color schemes, striking period modern architecture shot on location in Brazil, and an exaggerated but still beautiful use of multi-screen images, beginning with an opening credits sequence in which Hubert dances the twist with a bevy of babes. This sets the style of the film's look, which is to be silly but pretty at the same time. There's an excellent sequence where the hero climbs up to the diving board of his luxury hotel flexing muscles and dozens of resident bathing beauties in perfect period suits ogle him lovingly.

There are tiny throwaway touches. For instance walking through an airport Hubert spits out a wad of chewing gum and as he walks out of the picture stage left, somebody is picking the gum off his shoe. In another scene Hubert sets his camera (he's posing as a journalist) to take his picture roadside with a glam sports car he's been loaned, but he fails to notice the background next to the car is full of junk metal. Not such a throwaway but partly that for French audiences, Hubert's CIA pal Tremendous (Ken Samuels) is continually foul-mouthed and abusive toward Hubert in English, though the hero never takes note of that. Samuels pushes the character into a gross-out satire of American rudeness.

Dolores and Hubert go to meet the Nazi's son at a costume party that turns out in fact to be a big convocation of the neo-Nazis in full regalia; OSS shows up disguised as Robin Hood. Meanwhile the good guys are continually being followed around by a pair of Mexican wrestlers in absurd head guards working as assassins for the Nazis. Hubert has a peculiar fear of heights -- "vertige," vertigo -- that goes back, oddly enough, to a trapeze accident he was involved in. The Nazi general is Rüdiger Vogler's Von Zimmel, who is not quite Christoph Walz's Col. Landa, but has some of that quality. His son Heinrich, found in a beachside hippie colony, is ably impersonated by Alex Lutz. Again, just as in popular American movies, even today, everybody speaks English, both Brazilians and Nazis talk to each other in French -- though Dolores and her two Mossad associates briefly exchange some Hebrew.

Hazanavicius has said he switched references from early Bond movies and Hitchcock in Cairo, Nest of Spies to a focus more on action adventure references, and he says he "could mention over twenty films," but names Harper, That Man from Rio, The Thomas Crown Affair, North by Northwest, the "Matt Helm" series, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and Suzuki's Tokyo Drifter. Scoffers who debunk both efforts or claim this one is cruder or less funny than the first, just aren't paying attention. These films are loving parody, which means their echoes are detailed and many-layered. Rio ne répend pas is actually better than Next of Spies in many ways, though fans will have different favorite sequences in each. The envelope-pushing prize goes to this film, with its combining of Jews and Nazis. There is a memorable scene in which von Zimmel, the film's most odious Nazi, begs OSS 117 for mercy high atop the foot of Corcovado's Christ over Rio by reciting Shylock's "Hath not a Jew eyes" speech, substituting "Nazi" for "Jew." Now that's entertainment!

One can't help imagining Tarantino relishing this movie. The filmmakers expect to continue the series.

Opened in Paris April 15, 2009 to universal acclaim. Shown as part of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at Lincoln Center, New York in March 2010.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.