Agent trouble (1987)
Directed by Jean-Pierre Mocky

Film Review

The cinema of Jean-Pierre Mocky is definitely an acquired taste, consisting mostly of acidly pungent satires mocking just about every aspect of life in France, in a way that makes a ritual slaughter of good taste and political correctness.  You either love Mocky or you hate him but some of his films are hard to dislike even if you have an aversion to Mocky's oeuvre in general.  Agent trouble is one such film, a brazen pastiche of the Hitchcockian suspense thriller that carries just a faint odour of Mocky's trademark subversiveness.  It's a film that Alfred Hitchcock himself may well have directed in his later, more cynical years, as well as being one of the more entertaining examples of what is now termed the néo-polar, or French political thriller.  Agent trouble was adapted from the novel The Man Who Loved Zoos by the well-known American writer Malcolm Bosse.

Coming straight after Mocky's caustic Lourdes-themed satire Le Miraculé (1987), one of the director's most commercially successful films, Agent trouble likewise had little difficulty attracting a mainstream audience, as well as generally positive reviews from the critics.  The film's success at the box office owes probably less to Mocky and more to the dizzying ensemble of talent he managed to bring together, including Catherine Deneuve at her dowdiest, complete with overlarge spectacles and a hideous perm wig.  Denuded of her habitual glamour, Deneuve is still a force to be reckoned with and she fits far more easily into Mocky's idiosyncratic world than you might expect.  The wig and glasses actually suit her, conferring on her not just the vulnerability which the story demands but also a fierce femme libre tenacity.  It may well have started a fashion trend among the less self-aware feminists.

Matching Deneuve's steely determination is Richard Bohringer's even steelier hitman.  Like Deneuve's go-getter heroine, Bohringer's character is a tongue-in-cheek caricature of a thriller stereotype, the joke being that whilst he is a hardened and resourceful killer, his health is such that he could shuffle off this mortal coil at any moment.  The main element of suspense is not whether Bohringer will kill Deneuve, but whether Bohringer will last to the end of the film.  Kristin Scott Thomas appears briefly in one of her earliest screen roles, and sticks around long enough to convince us that French cinema is in dire need of her services (which, at the time, was probably true).

Popular singer turned actor Tom Novembre is convincing as the kind of troublesome activist you know will be snuffed out before the story has barely got underway, and Mocky has no end of fun playing an agent of the shady French security services, the DST.  Pierre Arditi is saddled with the least convincing character in the story and looks as if he was cast mainly to attract the flak for the film's ludicrous ending.  The film is better served by Héléna Manson (best known for playing the sinister nurse Marie Corbin in Clouzot's 1943 classic Le Corbeau) and Dominique Lavanant, who received a Best Supporting Actress César for her ever so over-the-top portrayal of a nymphomaniac sightseer.

William Lubtchansky's stunning location photography contributes a haunting allure to the film, the icy wintry landscapes containing a palpable sense of menace within their meretricious beauty.  Gabriel Yared's lush score also adds to the film's eerie feel, helping to make this one of Jean-Pierre Mocky's most memorable and chilling films.  Mocky's penchant for excess surfaces in a few scenes but for the most part the director is remarkably restrained, with the result that Agent trouble is probably his most satisfying film, as well as one of his darkest.

Film Synopsis

One winter's morning a coach laden with tourists careers off the road and plunges into an icy lake in the Pyrenees.  Fifty are killed.  But this is not a straightforward road accident; it is an execution authorised by someone high up in the interest of national security.  The only witness to the mass killing is Victorien, who saw that the passengers were gassed before they drowned.  Realising that he has stumbled onto something big, Victorien sets out to find those responsible, but ends up getting himself killed.  His aunt, Amanda Weber, carries on the investigation, determined to avenge the death of her nephew...