OSS 117: Lost in Rio

[Blowfeld]

Post by Sean on 4/15/2010 12:00pm


Director Michel Hazanavicius and his carved-from-soap star Jean Dujardin slew audiences at WFF08 with OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies, starring Dujardin as the James Bond knockoff Hubert. The filmmakers returned Hubert to the Orpheum Main Stage with the sequel, Lost in Rio, and received just as spirited a response. (Plot recap: Hubert is lost in Rio.) Unlike the visual and structural gasbaggery of, say, the Austin Powers movies, the efficient, classical filmmaking of the OSS 117 films -- cleanly framed, handsomely shot, craftily edited -- could be deployed in service of an actual spy movie to creditable results. This is why the comedy works; in each scene, the proceedings tilt toward comedy, rather than being forced to continually ratchet up the wackiness. On a number of occasions the movie goes split-screen, and while it could uncharitably be read as an elbow to the ribs about the dopiness of '60s and '70s movies that used the technique, there's no denying that Lost in Rio uses it wonderfully -- it showcases comic performances, makes gags funnier and is pictorially beautiful. That's a hat trick that the OSS 117 movies continually score. Because this sequel is so like its parent, its only legitimate raison d'etre is if it's as funny if not funnier; Lost in Rio suggests a third movie in the series could be justified.

On Twitter, both @horiconnights and @Robt77 (Rob Thomas of the Capital Times) noted how offensive the movie is, which forces me to ask just what that means. Hubert is a buffoon, totally naive about the geopolitics he participates in and with dim awareness of how unreconstructed he is -- meeting Mossad, he's nonplussed about his assumption that a female lieutenant is a secretary, but backpedals from saying he's not sure he can leave his suitcase of cash in their care lest they think he distrusts Jews with his money. The targets of Hubert's incivility respond with indifference, sometimes hostile, sometimes paternal, but always regarding him like a museum exhibit about daftness. ("You're France's best agent?") To the extent they're offended, characters express their offense, but never is the joke on them. For example, a vengeful Chinese spy hunts down Hubert for killing his comrades in Gstaad, which, per the subtitles, he mispronounces as "Gsta." After four or five rounds of back-and-forth, it dawns on Hubert what the spy is trying to say; he cracks up, and the audience laughs at him -- you'd really have to stretch to call that a ching chong joke. (If you want to argue that cartoon Nazis are offensive, or that the Hubert ultimately winning the justifiably disinterested girl is offensive, that's a conversation we can have, but that's not what people mean when they talk about how the movie is offensive.) I'll be the first to admit the stock movie character that gets our laughs by skirting political correctness is a tired conceit, but -- what can I say? -- when that character is French, it's still really funny.

http://www.dane101.com/arts/2010/04/15/ ... ost_in_rio