Thursday, February 16, 2012

OSS 117: Lost in Rio

[Click for a larger, more 1967ish view.]

Michel Hazanavicius’s OSS 117: Rio ne répond plus [OSS 117: Lost in Rio] (2009) is the sequel to OSS 117: Le Caire, nid d’espions [OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies] (2006). Here OSS 117 (Jean Dujardin) travels to Rio to deliver payment to the escaped Nazi Von Zimmel (Rüdiger Vogler) in exchange for a list of 50,000 French collaborators. (Talk about your politically incorrect plot premise.) Once in Rio, 117 ends up helping Mossad agent Dolorès Koulechov (Louise Monot) track Von Zimmel down. The Dujardin-Monot partnership lacks the comic zest of the Dujardin-Bérénice Bejo partnership in Nest of Spies, and some of the jokes we’ve seen before. But there are wonderful moments: a drug-fueled orgy (it’s 1967), a fight in a chicken coop, a costume party with Dujardin as Robin Hood (or is it Dujardin as Errol Flynn as Robin Hood?). And there are delightful over-the-top homages to North by Northwest and Vertigo. Not as funny as Lost in Rio, but very funny.

A related post
OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies

[Above, OSS 117 and CIA agent Bill Trumendous (Ken Samuels).]

comments: 2

Lessons of a Teaching Student said...

Thanks so much for your review of this movie. I saw a trailer of it a year or so ago, and forgot the name of the movie. Recently, my wife and I were discussing some movies that we'd been interested in seeing and still haven't seen yet. As soon as I saw the name in my reader I knew this was the one that we'd been talking about. In addition, we just recently went to see "The Artist" and it's interesting to see that Dujardin and Bejo have worked together again.

Thanks again,
Mike

Michael Leddy said...

You’re welcome, Mike. I hope Bejo and Dujardin and Hazanavicius make many more movies together.