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Spy(ies) review
:. Director: Nicolas Saada
:. Starring: Guillaume Canet, Géraldine Pailhas
:. Running Time: 1:39
:. Year: 2008
:. Country: France
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French writer/director Nicolas Saada's debut film might be called Spy(ies) but the world he describes here is at the opposite of the glamour clichés usually associated with the genre. His film is slow paced, enveloped in gray tones — the London weather might obviously have something to do with this — and is more of a psychological character study than a big adventure full of intrigue.
Guillaume Canet (Love me if you dare, The Beach) plays Vincent, a baggage handler who, after being involved in an accident involving a diplomatic suitcase he's trying to steal, is recruited by the French secret service to seduce Claire (Géraldine Pailhas — Don Juan Demarco), the wife of a man who might be linked to a terrorist network.
What follows is a game of seduction where love will intervene, and Mr. Saada's script mostly delivers the portrait of a confused man, a non-professional spy who struggles to find balance between his duty and his feelings. As a result, Spy(ies) unfolds as a typical French love drama and, if you're looking for thrills, you'll need to wait until the end to remember you were watching a spy film.
With Spy(ies), Mr. Saada aims at debunking the myth of the spy profession by giving us a realistic look at its mechanism. What he shows us is pretty simple and unspectacular, secret services manipulating civilians into getting them the information they need, work which is mostly done through the use of blackmail, seduction — a prostitution subtheme which was curiously also the center of the recent and mediocre spy French film Secrets of State — and usb keys rather than usual guns and gadgets.
Contrary to the recent Secrets of State, which shared the same premise by giving us a realistic look at modern counterintelligence, Spy(ies) succeeds by adopting a monochromatic realism, while the former couldn't find its mark between realism and blockbuster entertainment. The right tone of the script and the self-restraint of the direction are the sign of quality cinema, which might be surprising here as this is Mr. Saada's debut work as a writer/director. However, when you know that he used to work as a critic for emblematic film magazine Les Cahiers du Cinéma, this might give you an idea about the standards of quality he imposed himself.
But Spy(ies) also works finely because of its casting choice and there is something intriguing about leading man Guillaume Canet, as the versatile actor seems comfortable and believable whether he embodies a clean-cut yuppie or a messed-up and marginal character. Hiding his good looks under s scruffy beard, he carries the film, supported by a couple of strong performances by Géraldine Pailhas and Stephen Rea (V For Vendetta). Ms. Pailhas showcases both strength and fragility here, while keeping her French charm — but I arguably might not be very objective here as I've always been under the spell of the Marseille-born actress.
Getting back to the rules of the genre, Spy(ies) ends on with action but a final image captures the two lovers facing each other; it becomes clear that what you just watched was a love story with a spy intrigue in the background rather than vice-versa. This is certainly what you should expect from French cinema, which masters the art of turning any genre into an intimate drama — one need only recall Film Noir…
Fred Thom
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