FIVE CESAR NOMINATIONS!
Best Actor (Dujardin), Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Set Design, Costumes
This wicked, laugh-out-loud parody of spy films, in the spirit of The Man With One Red Shoe and Get Smart, has screened to phenomenal response at several international film festivals, and is set to do the same at its premiere screenings here.
It’s 1955, and Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath a.k.a. Agent OSS 117 (breakout sensation Jean Dujardin of Brice de Nice fame) is sent to the Egyptian capital to execute a whole shopping list of items for the Secret Service: investigating the death of his Cairo-based friend and spy Jack; monitoring the Suez Canal and brokering peace in the Middle East. OSS 177 is just the man for the mission: his suave self-importance and irresistibility to women is topped only by his phenomenal ignorance and dumb luck!
Deliciously straight-faced in its parody, CAIRO - NEST OF SPIES pays homage to the film and TV vocabulary of the sixties, felt mostly in its impeccable production design and animated opening sequence, its particularly bad lip synching (here used for the foreign characters) and wonderfully ostentatious use of blue-screen filming in the car-and-desert landscape sequences. A retro score by Ludovic Bource completes this wonderful comedic outing. Don’t miss it!
France 2006 - Comedy (99 mins)
In French with English Subtitles
Director: Micel Hazanavicius
Script: Jean-Francois Halin, inspired by the novels by Jean Bruce
Cast: Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Béjo, Aure Atika, Phillipe Lefebvre