OSS 117: Lost In Rio

OSS 117: Rio Ne Répond Plus

(France, 2009, 101 mins, 35mm)

Wisconsin Premiere

writer: Jean-François Halin, Michel Hazanavicius
director of photography: Guillaume Schiffman
editor: Reynald Bertrand
producer: Eric Altmayer, Nicolas Altmayer
cast: Jean Dujardin, Louise Monot, Rüdiger Vogler, Alex Lutz, Reem Kherici

The 2008 Wisconsin Film Festival opened with OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies, a send-up of the international spy genre. Director Michel Hazanavicius and writer Jean-François Halin have teamed again with comic megastar Jean Dujardin for this sequel (there’s another in the works). Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, aka OSS 117, is the bastard love-child of James Bond and Austin Powers. He has taste in tailors but not in jokes, and Lost In Rio plunges further into emphatically politically incorrect humor by sending the spy to Brazil to chase former Nazi officers in the late 1960s. He is joined by the beautiful Dolorès, a Mossad agent also pursuing the same quarry. (Yes: Jewish jokes, Nazi jokes, hippie jokes. You’ve been warned.) “The real core of the comedy lies in Bonisseur's blissful ignorance of changing society. He is Ward Cleaver given a gun and dropped into the free love era of women's lib, equal rights and desegregation. He is not only completely uncomprehending of the issues of the time, he is completely unaware that there even are issues at all. When the comedy of the OSS films work best it is precisely this clash of Bonisseur's legitimate well meaning – he truly believes that he is being the good guy and wants nothing more than to be the dashing hero loved and respected by all – and the wildly unacceptable belief system that he has built his world around that makes it sing.” — Todd Brown, twitchfilm.net.

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