Espion(s) (2009)

Espion(s) is a French thriller film first released in 2009, directed by Nicolas Saada.  The film stars Guillaume Canet, Géraldine Pailhas, Vincent Regan, Stephen Rea and Hippolyte Girardot.  It has also been released under the title: Spy(ies).  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


Rather than pursue a professional career worthy of his intellect and exam results, Vincent prefers to work as an airport baggage handler.  Along with his colleague Gérard, he secretly opens bags and suitcases so that he can steal their contents.  One day, Gérard is killed in an explosion when he opens a case belonging to a Syrian diplomat.  The French security services offer Vincent a deal he can hardly refuse.  Either he goes to prison for serial theft or helps find those who are implicated in the explosion...

Nicolas Saada is the latest in a long line of prominent critics on the influential film review journal Les Cahiers du cinéma to turn to filmmaking.  In his first feature, a stylish melange of spy thriller and romantic drama, Saada shows great promise, both as a director and screenwriter, and delivers one of the most seductive examples of French film noir in several years.  Admittedly the plot is little more than a sly reworking of the Hitchcock classic Notorious, but Saada’s slick and imaginative mise-en-scène prevents this from being a slavish imitation of a well-known work.  Au contraire, Espion(s) is as fresh and vibrant a piece of cinema as you can reasonably expect from a debutant film director.

A hirsuite Guillaume Canet heads an impressive cast which includes the stunning Géraldine Pailhas and some notable British performers, Vincent Regan and Stephen Rea.  Here Canet is suitably cast as the ordinary, slightly wimpish, young man who reluctantly becomes a secret agent, and in doing so undergoes a profound character transformation.   The role presumably suited Canet so well that he played it again in his next film, L’Affaire Farewell (2009).  Whilst the film’s focus is the romantic liaison between Canet and Pailhas, there is more interest value to be found elsewhere, particularly in the supporting contributions of Stephen Rea and Hippolyte Girardot, who make an amusing contrast as spymasters on the two sides of the Anglo-French divide.

Towards the end, the film does start to run out of steam and its main failing is the lack of a punchy denouement.  It is a shame that the spy intrigue, so deftly handled in the first half of the film, has to play second fiddle to the romantic plot in the second half, since Saada appears to be more inspired by the thriller side of the equation.  The director’s take on the murky world of espionage and terrorism owes more to the novels of John Le Carré than to the James Bond movies, far more realistic and chilling than is customary for films of this genre.  Whilst it may not be entirely satisfying, Espion(s) is still an elegantly crafted thriller, one that plays on modern day fears to great effect and offers an intensely sombre study in manipulation and deceit.

© James Travers 2010

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