OSS-117: Lost in Rio

Here is the followup to France's huge box office hit: another 1960s period spy spoof about the absurd secret agent Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, codenamed OSS-117, which sends up the unthinkingly reactionary and offensive attitudes of the postwar French ruling classes. Just as before, I found myself grinning sheepishly when I wasn't laughing, though the gags are less plentiful than before. This naughty, silly and wildly non-PC film, starring Jean Dujardin as the dopey patriot-hero, looks to me easily the equal of the Clouseau adventures. OSS-117 is now sent to Rio, tasked with capturing a fugitive Nazi and getting hold of his top-secret microfilmed list of Frenchmen who collaborated with the Hitler regime during the second world war. "Of course it is on microfilm," says Hubert stoutly, "the list must be tiny." He is forced to team up with a beautiful Mossad agent, the occasion for some jaw-dropping antisemitism. As before, the period movie detail is lovingly recreated.