Quote:
Originally Posted by John_Drake
I found this to be one of the best spy series I've ever watched. It has high production values, compelling writing, uniformly brilliant acting (Mathieu Kassovitz, et. al.), and tight direction (Eric Rochant).
I bought the individual seasons as they were released and suppose this is merely a repacking (?). Be aware that only season 1 did not have English subtitles, if that matters.
If you fancy Rochant's style, you may also wish to pick up the English-friendly Gaumont release of his 1994 film, Les Patriotes. It is an early rehearsal of sorts of the same themes that he would develop in the series (espionage as human drama/betrayal).
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I'll second that recommendation:
Although little seen in the English speaking world, Eric Rochant’s
Les Patriotes has the reputation of being perhaps the most realistic film on spycraft ever made – so much so that it’s said to be shown to trainees at Mossad despite not being a very flattering portrait of Israeli intelligence – and it’s a reputation that’s easy to believe. It takes a low-key matter of fact approach that’s convincing and involving as Yvan Attal’s French émigré works his way through various Mossad training exercises that defy the usual expectations of the genre before following him on two missions that both end badly for the people he and his team manipulate. And it’s more a film about manipulation and playing the long game to get people to do what they want than a conventional thriller, the agents chosen as much for their own weaknesses as their strengths – Attal is told outright it’s because he’s so malleable that he’s so useful to the group that takes an option on his services. His assets aren’t so lucky, particularly Richard Masur’s idealistic Jewish-American NSA agent (obviously based on Jonathan Pollard) whose rose-tinted view of his spiritual homeland makes him an ideal conduit for passing on classified intelligence the Americans won’t share but whose nationality makes him eminently disposable to avoid a diplomatic incident.
The conflicting moralities and agendas within the service and the paradox of doing bad to do good aren’t ignored, though the film doesn’t hit you over the head with them: there’s little discussion, more a conscious avoiding the subject once its raised because no-one wants to know or deal with them. As is the way of this particular corner of the spy genre this deliberate emotional detachment gradually takes its toll on Attal as even his family relationships become both covert – he both avoids and spies on his sister while a potential relationship with Sandrine Kiberlaine’s high class hooker is left as a particularly painful question no-one will answer – and potentially dangerous. The operations are shown in a matter of fact fashion that avoids over-stylisation, taking its lead from Attal’s position as both instigator and detached observer in his own life (it’s no accident that one character shares the name of one of John Le Carre’s creations), and it’s surprisingly engrossing. Only the final scene, which plays like a last-minute addition by a nervous studio to send the audience out with a happier ending fails to convince, but aside from that there’s more than enough to admire to compensate – not least Masur’s superb performance as the naďve and hopelessly out of his depth traitor (unusually for a foreign film, all the American cast, which includes Nancy Allen and Allen Garfield, give natural performances in their own language that don’t feel like they’ve been directed and written by google translate) and some fine understated work from the Israeli supporting cast.
The new Bluray is leaps and bounds over the crappy US NTSC DVD from Synkronized: as seems to be the rule for that label it was a shoddy standards conversion with soft focus despite so much edge enhancement in some scenes that every time you see a car fender it’s like it’s shot through a heat haze. On the plus side it’s in the original 2.35:1 widescreen ratio and has English subtitles for the French and Hebrew scenes as well as an unsubtitled trailer, but the film really deserved better - and thankfully got it with Gaumont's French disc.
Rochant's other spy movie was more hit-and-miss for me, feeling like he was trying too hard to get a pre-packaged hit to compensate for Les Patriotes' box-office failure:
Möbius is one of those glossy French romantic thrillers that passes the time satisfyingly enough but doesn’t linger long in the memory afterwards. Cécile De France is a disgraced Lehman Brothers trader barred from the US and working in exile in Monte Carlo – talk about being down on your luck – for dodgy Russian oligarch Tim Roth’s dodgy bank. Approached by Russian FSB agents posing as French agents who are unaware that she’s already working for CIA agents, all of whom want to bring down Roth, she finds herself falling for Jean Dujardin, unaware that he’s heading the Russian team, who in turn is unaware the Americans are using him to do their dirty work.
Despite Luc Besson’s Europacorp’s name among the film’s producers it’s not an action film (the only action scene in the entire film is a fight in a lift straight out of
Diamonds Are Forever), with writer-director Éric Rochant aiming for a modern-day French
Notorious, relying heavily on the chemistry of his leads to variable effect as a few good scenes compensate for some more run-of-the-mill filler. Dujardin with a salt-and-pepper beard gets to play a more serious spy than his OSS 117 and relies on moody glances and soulful star power, De France gives better than she gets on the page, particularly in a sex scene that unusually is more about revealing character than revealing flesh, Roth seems too bored to even try a Russian accent unless he’s actually speaking Russian while
Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears director Vladimir Menshov steals his few scenes as Dujardin’s boss without even trying. There are moments of heavy-handedness, not least when the revelation that one character is a Russian is accompanied by a sombre Russian Orthodox choir on the soundtrack, but for the most part it retains an elegant distance as events unfold pretty much exactly as you expect to a slightly copout ending that might have worked better if it had ended a minute earlier. But it’s certainly better than its proudly announced international tax shelter status would lead you to expect.
Lionsgate’s region A-locked US Blu-ray offers the film in a reasonable 2.39:1 transfer (though it’s not quite as smooth as it could be in the opening reel) with English subtitles for the French and Russian dialogue – much of the film is in English - with interviews with director and stars, three brief featurettes and the US trailer – but be aware, it’s a very slow disc to load.
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