Imogène McCarthery (2010)
Directed by Alexandre Charlot, Franck Magnier

Film Review

Coming hot on the heels of Michel Hazanavicius's full-bodied spy-thriller spoof OSS 117: Rio ne répond plus (2009), Imogène McCarthery is a forlorn sojourn into similar territory, a lesser film which looks as if it has missed the boat and knows it.  On paper, the film has a lot going for it.  It was written and directed by Alexandre Charlot and Franck Magnier, two of the writers on the phenomenally successful French satirical TV series Les Guignols de L'info (the French version of the UK's Spitting Image), who also scripted the hit film comedy Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis (2008).  The film stars Catherine Frot, one of the most talented and likeable comedic actresses in French cinema today, partnered with three other notable performers, Lambert Wilson, Michel Aumont and Danièle Lebrun.  With such a bevy of talent, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the film could hardly fail to be a comic masterpiece.  Alas, for their directing debut, Charlot and Magnier appear to have run slap bang into a creative impasse and the film falls way short of our expectations.  There are some good points - the film is attractively photographed, it is well-acted and occasionally funny (admittedly nowhere near as sharp and funny as Les Guignols), but overall it is just too predictable to make much of an impact.

This is a shame because the story concept has great potential.  The heroine of the film - a feisty English-hating Scottish ultra-nationalist who becomes the unlikeliest of secret agents - was created by the popular writer Charles Exbrayat and featured in seven of his novels, including Ne vous fâchez pas Imogène, on which the film is based.  Imogène's exploits made it onto French television in the early 1990s, in a well-liked series in which she was magnificently portrayed by Dominique Lavanant (Je suis un sacré phénomène. Et je m'appelle Imogène...).   One of the problems with Charlot and Magnier's film is that Catherine Frot's portrayal of Imogène is virtually indistinguishable from her previous amateur sleuth creation, Prudence Beresford in Pascal Thomas's Agatha Christie romps: Mon petit doigt m'a dit (2005) and Le Crime est notre affaire (2008) - to the extent that whenever she gets into a sticky situation you half expect André Dussollier to come rushing to her rescue.  It is disappointing that an actress of Frot's ability could not delineate the two roles better, although, to be fair, her well-honed comedic skills are ultimately what save the film.

Whilst it may offer few surprises, Imogène McCarthery is an effective pastiche of the kind of 1960s British spy thrillers that have now (contrary to logic and good taste) become cult classics.  If Michel Hazanavicius's OSS 117 films were inspired by big screen offerings such as the early James Bond movies, Charlot and Magnier's film has a more modest scope, sending up the kind of creative nonsense that was served up to undiscriminating television audiences in the '60s.  Fans of The Avengers and Department S will get far more out of this film than those whose exposure to espionage fantasy is limited to the bigger budget exploits of 007 and Harry Palmer.   On the plus side, the film is somewhat less self-conscious than the much-vaunted Hazanavicius spy romps and is a little kinder to the genre it pokes fun at, although some would argue that the bean-feast of self-referential Mickey-taking in the OSS 117 films is infinitely preferable to the lukewarm banalities that Charlot and Magnier offer up from the back of their kebab van.   Imogène McCarthery is unlikely to become a comedy classic but it somehow manages to be an entertaining piece of ephemera, memorable if only for the one hilarious scene in which Catherine Frot beats a Soviet agent to death with an oar, re-enacting the famous shower scene from Hitchcock's Psycho with sufficient zeal to make you wonder if she isn't genetically linked to Norman Bates. Mercifully, we don't see the results of Frot's homicidal outburst, but we pity her agent...

Film Synopsis

Imogène McCarthery is proud of her Scottish ancestry, almost fanatically so.  Rugby, bagpipes and malt whisky are her three main passions, along with cultivating an undying hatred for the English.  Secretary to the Admiralty in London, she is summoned to the office of her boss, Sir Woolish, expecting to be fired after committing a minor misdemeanour.  Instead, she is charged with an important matter of state: to deliver the blueprints for a new aircraft to, of all places, her home village in Scotland.  On the train journey up to Scotland, she shares a compartment with three of her compatriots, not suspecting for a moment that they might be enemy agents...