Agent trouble

I read the book very recently and this story was made for a director as Jean Pierre Mocky, the weirdest, most offbeat, unusual, quirkly French director ever. This story is very surprising, riveting, despite an ankward directing. But keep in mind that with Mocky, it is always "lousy" on purpose, to create an atmosphere. Very strange scheme, eerie, disturbing. This remains of one best Jean Pierre Mocky's film from his second part of career. I insist on the fact that the film is very close to the book, story and characters. Not very realistic though, rather unbelievable, but an offbeat story is rarely believable. Richard Bohringer steals the show, in a very ambivalent government hired killer character, for whom the audience may feel some empathy despite his awful actions. An awful character with this young woman in love with him, as if he was the good character of the film. Very very unusual. As in the book...

With hindsight, "Agent Trouble" effortlessly stands out in Jean Pierre Mocky's copious filmography. The botched job that mares many of his efforts is virtually absent except in the tail end that smells alacrity. Instead, we are entitled to a story built and honed with clarity and even if the directive line is derivative as a whole, the film gathers pace as soon as Richard Borhinger runs after Catherine Deneuve who wants to understand what's going on around the death of her nephew Victorien (Tom Novembre) and the mystery of these 50 dead people in a coach found at the bottom of a lake in the mountains.

The choice of the scenery adds to the pernicious charm that shrouds the film, notably these snowy mountains that give a sultry sensation. A tight editing and an entrancing music increase the pleasure and it's noticeable to note down the disenchantment that touches many of the characters, either it is Borhinger who acts a frail spy and whose conjugal life with his wife Delphine goes unravel or Deneuve whose sentimental life is like a desert. And here and there Mocky didn't jettison his bias for onslaughts directed against some convenient values which if they might seem extraneous for some viewers don't encroach on the unifying thread: Victorien who expresses his disgust for wild animals kept in zoo who'd better be free. Even when the solution to the mystery is solved and the culprits are unmasked, Mocky's attacks towards them are fully justified.

In one sequence, a voyager tries to see the misty mountainous landscape through a telescope. "I can't see anything!" she complains. The viewer, at this step of the story can't too and will have to still wait a little to discover who's pulling the strings.

I don't know what to think about Mocky. He's of the same generation as Truffaut and Chabrol, yet never found a mass audience. One of his films, Snobs, is listed in the Time Out film guide, so at least he was spotted by one critic. Mocky is an anarchist within the French film industry: he flails around, shooting at targets on the right and left, not hitting much.

Deneuve, Bohringer, Novembre, and Scott-Thomas all are pretty stiff here, not knowing what they're supposed to do. The story is a mess; why is Bohringer shooting all those people with a handgun equipped with silencer? Why the long bus tour, which seems to go nowhere? Why does Catherine Deneuve wear that silly wig, which makes her look so frumpy? Why am I watching this?