Nicolas Bedos is not going dead hand: the director takes over the successful parody franchise
OSS 117
with a new opus,
Red Alert in Black Africa
, which attacks racism and political correctness through caricature.
The film, due in theaters on August 4, is one of the most anticipated of the summer.
It is screened on Saturday evening at the Cannes Film Festival, after the closing ceremony.
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In this new part of the adventures of the French secret agent, the comic genius of Jean Dujardin, who embodies him, is intact.
The Oscar-winning actor dons the retro costume of the least gifted French intelligence spy for the third time.
On the program: new buffoonish stunts, parodies of James Bond scenes and brutal racist protrusions to be taken in the third degree.
“
I like being a secret agent, shooting outdoors, doing my little movie stunts.
OSS, that's it: content and form,
”Jean Dujardin told AFP.
In
Red Alert in Black Africa
, 117 is given a new mission, helping an African leader (the country is not specified, regardless in the eyes of OSS and his superiors ...) to put down a rebellion before the elections presidential, of course played in advance.
But Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, dressed to the nines and who is still saluting the small female staff with a slap on the buttock, takes a big blow of old: he is added the services of an ambitious youngster, OSS 1001 (Pierre Niney).
Fatou N'Diaye is Zéphyrine the "bad guy", wife of the president and leader of the rebels, in whose bed, obviously, OSS 117 will end.
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Twelve years after leaving
Rio no longer responds
, will
OSS 117
humor
sound the same, in a society where questions of racism, colonial heritage and questioning of patriarchy have become central? The two previous sections, signed Michel Hazanavicius, also played with exoticism and clichés.
Red Alert in Black Africa
head-on attacks these angry subjects. It is Nicolas Bedos, 42, who took the controls for this adaptation to the fast pace. Personality known since his appearances on television with Laurent Ruquier, himself humorist, actor and writer, with
OSS 117
he signs his third film, after
La Belle Epoque
and
Mr. and Mrs. Adelman
.
Engaged on the left, Guy Bedos' son is not afraid of divisive positions, and worked with the same screenwriter as for the previous opus.
The film takes place in France in 1981, at the end of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's mandate and wields unfiltered humor, with Jean Dujardin as an aging white male, unbalanced and outdated, who gets bogged down in political correctness.
“
It is not the politically incorrect, which implies the desire to jostle, to shock, to hurt, which I hold dear.
It's up to the freedom of humor
, Nicolas Bedos told AFP.
We make films (...) for spectators, not for Twitter!
"
"
Our friends see racism everywhere
"
Movement #MeToo, “cancel culture”, this opus multiplies the nods to the debates of the moment, with a hero who revises his fundamentals, in the plane which takes off from Paris, by rereading
Tintin in Congo
. Warned by his superior before disembarking on the continent of the fact that "
our friends see racism everywhere
", the spy makes tons of it as soon as he arrives at the hotel, refusing a black bellboy to carry him his suitcases while throwing : “
But what are these prejudices?
"
Virilism also takes its rank, always in supported caricature mode, with a macho and homophobic OSS 117, reduced to sexual impotence and exceeded by 1001, the character of Pierre Niney, metrosexual in devil. Obviously, this great trip will be the occasion of life lessons for the character of Dujardin, convinced at the outset that "
Africans are happy, sympathetic, and dance well
".
Will
OSS 117
find its audience? The previous parts of the French cousin of
Austin Powers
, adapted from a literary series by Jean Bruce inaugurated in 1949, set the bar high: the first two episodes gathered at their release more than two million spectators each.