Nest of Spies stars French comic actor Jean Dujardin, as Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, French agent OSS-117. Based on a French spy novel series from the 1950s and 1960s (which spawned its own film series at the time), and directed by Michel Hazanavicius, the film remains faithful to the genre it satirizes, paying homage to the noir-ish spy thrillers of the 1950s (complete with a Peter Lorre lookalike) and Connery-era James Bond.
The film’s pre-credits sequence takes place in 1945 with an obvious homage to the airport scene in Casablanca — but then turns it completely on its head. The remaining action takes place 10 years later as Hubert finds himself in Nasser's Egypt on the trail of his missing comrade. From there, the xenophobic and completely clueless secret agent stumbles his way through the usual retinue of pretty women, spies, assassins, and dirty-dealing businessmen.
The film plays with the tension between the way in our hero views the Middle Eastern culture around him (as it was through a colonialist lens) and our own lens, which has had 50 years of revolts, wars, and the downfall of European colonial rule. But what I enjoyed most about the film was the way in which it maintains the atmosphere and tone of the genre it satirizes, lovingly playing with iconic pop cultural and classic film images, rendering them slightly askew, viewed through an ironic lens. The results is a comedy that is at once stylish and silly, both broadly funny and subtly dry in its humor — something completely different.
A sequel is currently in production. Can't wait.
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