I thought after the okay-but-not-great Get Smart that I wouldn’t have much use for another spy spoof anytime soon. But a French twist on the genre, OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies, in spite of its hamstrung title, has made me revise my opinion. The film is the first distributed by Music Box Films, an adjunct of Chicago’s Music Box Theatre. The movie is set in the 1950s (but looks and sounds like the James Bond of the 1960s). The ‘OSS-117’ of the title refers to Hubert’s (Jean Dujardin) spy designation (a variation on ‘007’). Hubert is a cross between Austin Powers and Inspector Clouseau but like those two bumblers, his sharkskin suits and phony bravado somehow make him an irresistible chick magnet. Hubert is sent to Cairo to pick up where a fellow agent left off after being murdered. In the movie’s first of many homoerotic references, each time the agent’s name is mentioned Hubert daydreams wistfully about a day on the beach frolicking and wrestling with him and then snaps back to reality with a smile on his face. Later Hubert tells a gorgeous brunette accomplice (in the Elizabeth Hurley role) that his revolver (which he holds at crotch level) has ‘Unsealed lots of lips of both men and women’ as he threatens her.
The homoerotic subtext is continued in the racy dialogue during a sequence in a steambath in which Hubert seems to enjoy his rubdown a little too much. When Hubert is trapped inside a pyramid with some Nazis, they taunt him with gay slurs about his love of ‘wieners,’ purposely misinterpreting remarks Hubert made in the sauna. He emphatically denies any gay proclivities (and beds the requisite female beauties), but the point is referenced again and again for comedic effect throughout the movie, with Hubert each time denying any gay bent but—given the homoerotic beach-scene reverie—he perhaps denies too strongly. Regardless of Agent OSS 117’s true sexual nature (perhaps a sequel will flesh this out), OSS 177: Cairo, Nest of Spies is a gently amusing and a stylish addition to the spy spoof genre with an engaging cast and suitably silly performance by Dujardin. In French with subtitles.
The film plays an exclusive engagement at the Landmark Century Centre Cinema beginning Fri., June 27. www.musicboxfilms.com
Film Notes:
—Queer filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato have made a host of provocative reality shows and documentaries (both short and feature-length), including The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Gay Republicans, Party Monster (both a doc and dramatic version with Dylan McDermott playing club owner Peter Gatien, my former boss), 101 Rent Boys and my personal favorite, Inside Deep Throat. Now the duo have lensed When I Knew. The half-hour film, which is based on the book by Robert Trachtenburg, covers a wide spectrum of folks reminiscing directly to the camera about the moment they realized they were gay. As expected, the stories present a wide range of recollections—funny, terrifying, sad, heart-wrenching—and the filmmakers’ simple approach wisely allows the storytellers to speak for themselves. When I Knew premieres on Cinemax June 26 and will be concurrently available on DVD.
—The Gene Siskel Film Center kicks off a series devoted to the great Italian director Luchino Visconti with a screening of his 1971 homoerotic masterpiece, Death in Venice, Thurs., June 26, at 6 p.m. Based on Thomas Mann’s novella, Dirk Bogarde plays a German composer who becomes obsessed with a beautiful blonde, androgynous boy while on vacation in Venice. The series also includes a June 28th and July 1st screening of Visconti’s infamous and lurid (it was originally X-rated) The Damned. This 1969 epic focuses on a wealthy industrial family getting into business with the decadent Nazis. The film, which includes Helmut Berger as a murderous pedophile and transvestite, includes a recreation of ‘the night of the long knives,’ the notorious evening in which Hitler ordered the massacre of his political enemies, including a battalion of his openly gay officers and soldiers. It screens June 28 and July 1. The little-seen, more comedic Conversation Piece from 1974 finds Burt Lancaster as a bookish history professor, whose life is disrupted by some very spirited new neighbors. They include the petulant, hunky Berger, who soon awakens desire in the fossilized Lancaster. The movie screens Tues., July 15. Gay audiences will also appreciate a rare chance to see an uncut, newly minted print of Viscontini’s 1972 film Ludwig, his lavish biography of Bavaria’s gay king (with Berger again in the title role) who built fairytale castles, commissioned operas from Wagner, and eventually went mad. It screens Sat., July 26, at 3 p.m. The series also includes several other Visconti films. www.siskelfilmcenter.com
—TCM (Turner Classic Movies) will broadcast a three-film tribute to the late dancing and musical sensation Cyd Charisse Fri., June 27 (check local listings for viewing times). In 1952’s Singin’ in the Rain, Charisse memorably tempts Gene Kelly in the film’s ballet finale, ‘Broadway Melody,’ while in 1953’s The Band Wagon she co-stars with Fred Astaire—and the two dance what may be film’s most erotic and romantic number, ‘Dancing in the Dark.’ Later, in the equally renowned ‘Girl Hunt Ballet,’ Charisse’s justly famed legs, encased in a shimmering red dress, wrap around Astaire as she vamps him around the barroom setting. The TCM tribute concludes with Charisse’s 1957’s re-teaming with Astaire, Silk Stockings, a lesser effort (even with a Cole Porter score) that nevertheless offers her plenty of opportunities to display those gams and her innate classiness. Charisse left Hollywood by the early 1960s for nightclub work and television appearances, but she made a brief but memorable appearance in Janet Jackson’s 1990 video for ‘Alright,’ which paid tribute to the Hollywood musicals that she had illuminated.
Check out my archived reviews at www.windycitytimes.com or www.knightatthemovies.com. Readers can leave feedback at the latter Web site, where there is also ordering information on my book of collected film reviews, Knight at the Movies 2004-2006.