OSS 117: Le Caire - Nid d'Espions
05/11/15 Filed in: DVD
I've recently acquired a few French films from Amazon's used DVD marketplace, and I've just watched OSS 117: Le Caire - Nid d'Espions (Cairo - Nest of Spies).
This is a spoof of the spy film genre and draws heavily from the early Bond films. Jean Dujardin plays the Bond-type character, interestingly named Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath. His female co-star is played by Bérénice Bejo, and those of you who take an interest in such things will recognise this duo from the Oscar winning silent film of 2011, The Artist.
Hubert is, of course, God's gift to women and has no respect whatsoever for the religion of the local people, as shown by his silencing of the Muezzin, whose call to prayer wakes him up on his first morning in Cairo. He bumbles along and through sheer happenstance "saves the Middle East".
This is a spoof of the spy film genre and draws heavily from the early Bond films. Jean Dujardin plays the Bond-type character, interestingly named Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath. His female co-star is played by Bérénice Bejo, and those of you who take an interest in such things will recognise this duo from the Oscar winning silent film of 2011, The Artist.
Hubert is, of course, God's gift to women and has no respect whatsoever for the religion of the local people, as shown by his silencing of the Muezzin, whose call to prayer wakes him up on his first morning in Cairo. He bumbles along and through sheer happenstance "saves the Middle East".
My French isn't good enough to have watched it without the English subtitles, but having said this a lot of the dialogue is accessible if you have reasonable level of French comprehension.
It was released in 2006 and it seems that it received favourable reviews at that time. If you are interested, Peter Bradshaw's review in the Guardian provides a bit more detail of what to expect. Apparently the OSS 117 character predates Fleming's 007, whereas the natural assumption would be that it was the other way around.
It was released in 2006 and it seems that it received favourable reviews at that time. If you are interested, Peter Bradshaw's review in the Guardian provides a bit more detail of what to expect. Apparently the OSS 117 character predates Fleming's 007, whereas the natural assumption would be that it was the other way around.