Melissa McCarthy joins a long line of cinematic super-sleuths in writer/director Paul Feig’s satirical send-up , which flips the genre’s often overtly blokey tropes on their boofhead.
McCarthy’s Susan Cooper is the brains in Jude Law’s Bond-wannabe Bradley Fine’s on-mission ear. She moons for him like an old-school Moneypenny but soon receives a -style kick-ass update when he’s ruled out of action.
Rose Byrne’s stuck up British arms dealer with a handbag-sized nuke reveals she knows the secret identity of all her pursuers, so Cooper, an unknown quantity, gets pressed into superspy service.
Much like before it, Spy has a whole heap of fun playing with audience expectations of the genre while proving that spies come in all shapes and sizes. We take a look at some of the chameleon-like sleuths hiding out in SBS On Demand:
La Femme Nikita
(Luc Besson, 1999)
Ann Parillaud’s drug addicted and dangerous Nikita has all but given up on life when, during a hold-up gone wrong, she brutally executes a Parisian cop with his own gun.
Source: SBS Movies
Sentenced to life imprisonment, just when it seems as if she’ll never see the light of day again, Nikita’s given a surprising fresh start when the French Secret Service comes calling, implausibly faking her death and remaking her as a deadly assassin for the state in Luc Besson’s sexually charged thriller.
Parillaud goes from terrifying wild in the intense opening scenes to coolly composed as she undergoes rigorous conditioning, then almost lead a normal life again until such time as she’s called up for service, when the bullets start flying and there are explosions to avoid by jumping into air conditioning units in heels and a little black dress.
Bizarrely, given the Frenchier title La Femme Nikita in English-speaking markets, Besson forges a kick-ass anti-heroine in Parillaud, returning to the mould later for Scarlett Johansson’s Lucy. Props for casting Jeanne Moreau as Nikita’s spy mistress mentor in a cinematic passing of the empowered sex symbol baton.
Farewell
(Christian Carion, 2009)
Those French spies are at it again in Christian Carion’s Farewell, which tackles a real Cold War flashpoint during the early 80s, playing a big role in the collapse of the USSR, with all the meticulous moodiness and muddy moral ground of a John le Carré novel.
Source: SBS Movies
KGB colonel Vladimir Vetrov, here re-named Sergei Grigoriev and played by talented Serbian director Emir Kusturica, became disillusioned with the direction of the Soviet Union. Contacting French intelligence officer Pierre Froment, portrayed by dashing writer/director/actor Guillaume Canet, he becomes a double agent, handing over incendiary state secrets, not as a traitor, but as a passionate man hoping to change the country he loves for the better.
Philippe Magnan plays French president François Mitterrand who can’t wait to share the spoils with Fred Ward’s US counterpart Ronald Reagan. The real Reagan dubbed the incident, “one of the key espionage affairs of the 20th century,” and the film’s marketers were not slow in nabbing that grab for the trailer.
With a cameo for everyone’s favourite craggy-faced American Willem Dafoe, Joyeux Noel director Carion shows the reality behind the Bond-propagated myth of impossibly glamorous international espionage. While the tonal shifts can feel a little jarring, with an odd but not unwelcome sense of humour, there’s a believability to that too and an obvious love for cinema bleeds through Farewell, in both the casting and in snippets of John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
Beaumarchais the Scoundrel
(Édouard Molinaro, 1996)
Another real-life figure, the rakish society playboy and prolific satirical playwright Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, who penned both The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro, is the focus of this fabulously fun biopic from La Cage aux Folles director Édouard Molinaro.
Source: SBS Movies
“What’s a playwright got to do with spying?” you may very well ask, like a true super-snoop, but Beaumarchais, here played by the incomparable Fabrice Luchini, was a very busy man. As well as fitting in professional watchmaking, publishing, diplomacy, some shifty arms dealing during the American Revolution and a spot of gardening on the side, he was also something of international espionage agent too.
Having fallen foul of Michel Serrault’s King Louis XV because of his incendiary writing, Beaumarchais wangles his way back into the good books by flitting to London to act as a court insider snoop, funnelling invaluable info back to France in order to aid the American cause against the British during the Civil War.
Needless to say, what with the ‘Scoundrel’ part of that title being particularly relevant, he doesn’t exactly play ball. Luchini’s clearly having himself a right old hoot here, just like his historical forebear, leading to a thoroughly intriguing film.
OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies
(Michel Hazanavicius, 2006)
Everybody knows 007’s ultimate debonair double agent on his majesty’s secret service, Bond, James Bond, who appeared in 14 books penned by former naval intelligence officer Ian Fleming and has been portrayed by seven actors (including David Niven in the 1967 original, spoofy Casino Royale) across 25 films by the time Spectre, starring Daniel Craig, releases later this year.
Source: SBS Movies
Slightly less well-known, though huge in France, is fictional secret agent OSS 117, the codename for Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, created by prolific author Jean Bruce. A good bit more active than Mr. Bond, Hubert appears in no fewer than 91 novels pumped out by Bruce before his unfortunate death in a car accident in 1967. His wife Josette Bruce went on to write another 143.
The books were adapted into seven big screen outings for OSS 117 across 13 years, again played by a host of different actors kicking off with Ivan Desny in 1957’s OSS 117 N’est Pas Mort and wrapping up with Luc Merenda in 1970’s OSS 117 Prend Des Vacances.
They were rebooted in 2006, Austin Powers spoof-style with a dash of madcap Zucker brothers/Abrahams’ Airplane!/Naked Gun farce, by The Artist director Michel Hazanavicius. Jean Dujardin took the title role six years before scooping the Best Actor Oscar for The Artist’s blockbusting return to silent movies.
Dujardin is deliciously arrogant, with OSS 117 loving himself every bit as much as the ladies, with The Artist co-star Bérénice Bejo his entertainingly exasperated Hubert Girl. The send-up of '60s sexism, racism and general oafishness is spot on. Casablanca this is not, though Cairo, Nest of Spies did deservingly blag the César for Best Production Design.
OSS 117: Lost in Rio
(Michel Hazanavicius, 2009)
Continuing the globe-hopping trend of the Bond films, Dujardin was back as the hapless Hubert in 2009’s OSS 117: Lost in Rio, this time set in late 1960s South America. This time he’s on the hunt for a missing microfilm containing the names of Gallic Nazi collaborators, with Hazanavicius back in the writer/director’s chair and Jean-François Halin once again on co-scripting duties.
Source: SBS Movies
Continuing to mercilessly lampoon colonial post-war French arrogance, this time round it’s left to Louise Monot’s Mossad colonel Dolores to don the unfeasibly short mini-skirts and cop a barrage of dodgy anti-Semitic humour as the imbecilic but impenetrably self-assured OSS 117 offends everyone within earshot, including Mexican and Chinese nationals.
Thoroughly inappropriate, if you prefer your humour slightly less caustic, Hazanavicius’ follow-up is not the film for you, but it does contain a glorious Hitchcock pastiche mash-up finale that’s well worth the ticket price if you can stomach the decidedly un-PC antics.
Also well worth your time:
Female Agents
(Jean-Paul Salomé, 2008)
French cinema royalty Sophie Marceau returns to the screens in this WWII spy movie that celebrates the little-known heroics of French women in the Resistance movement. She stars as Louise, a trained sniper and the widow of a Resistance leader, who leads a five-woman commando unit that is to be parachuted into occupied France in May 1944 on a daring and dangerous mission to protect the secret of the D-Day Landings and eliminate the head of the German counter-intelligence.
Source: SBS Movies
The Lives of Others
(Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006)
This Cold War-era movie, which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2007 Oscars, is set in East Berlin, November 1984. Five years before its downfall, the former East-German government ensured its claim to power with a ruthless system of control and surveillance. Party-loyalist Captain Gerd Wiesler hopes to boost his career when given the job of collecting evidence against a playwright and his girlfriend. But he doesn't anticipate the impact that his immersion in the lives of others – in love, literature, free thinking and speech – will have upon him.
Source: SBS Movies
* SBS doesn't charge access fees for its SBS On Demand service. ISP and data charges may apply for individual users.
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