Truffaut's Children: Call My Agent!

 

The TV series “Lupin” has been getting most of the media attention, but another series from France is also a streaming hit: the human comedy “Call My Agent!”  Made for French TV beginning in 2015 and broadcast as “Dix Pour Cent” (Ten Percent), it was soon picked up worldwide, including by Netflix in the U.S.

 Originally conceived to run four seasons (all now available for streaming, with the fourth season this year), it was recently announced that there will be a fifth season, following a 90 minute TV movie.  Meanwhile, other nations are making their own copies, including an English language version shot in the UK.

 “Call My Agent” is about a struggling Paris talent agency with star movie actors and directors for clients.  The series follows the agents interactions with usually one or two French film stars in each episode, as well as depicting the drama and comedy in their own lives.  

 Netflix made a key decision in not dubbing “Call My Agent!” (as it does most other foreign-made series.) It relies instead on subtitles.  It was a daring but brilliant move, because the sound of the French language—even for those of us who don’t understand it—is essential (as well as a subtle reminder that most Americans who have seen French films, saw them with subtitles.)  The reason is simple: this series is very, very French.  Or more specifically, it is the French as we have seen them in exported French films.

 So I find it strange that the U.S. media I’ve seen never seems to acknowledge this essential quality.  Even the creators and producers of the series only mention American television programs, the “workplace” dramas and comedies like “The West Wing” (or they do when talking to American media.)  

Truffaut in a dream sequence in Day for Night

Yet the most obvious progenitor of this series is the French director Francois Truffaut.  Specifically it is the child in subject and spirit of Truffaut’s 1973 film “Day for Night” (“La Nuit Americaine), which is about the making of a movie, the personalities and relationships on the set, and the interactions with the movie business, the outside world and non-movie people. The peculiarities and complexities of actors and others in the theatrical and moviemaking world, and their shared love of their art, are at the heart of "Day for Night" and ultimately of "Call My Agent!"

 There are echoes of other French directors as well (including Claude Lelouch, who appears in the series) but to me Truffaut’s influence is the clearest. Several times I’ve thought while watching, “this is a Truffaut moment.”  I was feeling that strongly in the third season episode in which a baby was born in the agency office—and then suddenly the unmistakable Baroque theme from “Day for Night” played on the screen.

 It also doesn’t hurt that at least a couple of the French film stars who appear in the series previously worked with Truffaut and often are identified with him: Isabelle Adjani and Nathalie Baye (who appeared in three Truffaut films, including “Day for Night.”)   

J-P Leaud with Jacqueline Bisset and Truffaut in
Day for Night

The series character of the agent Gabriel is highly reminiscent of the characters Antoine Doinel (in several Truffaut movies, starting with his first, “The 400 Blows”) and the actor Alphonse in “Day for Night,” both played by Jean-Pierre Leaud: placid and charming, who suddenly explodes with impetuous passions, yet is basically good-hearted.  When Gabriel tells an outrageous lie in order to deny financing to a film because he’s jealous of his actor girlfriend’s relationship with the film’s director/star, it’s exactly the kind of move Doinel/Leaud would make.

 The character of the young Camille (who we follow first in season one, but who unfortunately often fades into the background thereafter) has that Truffaut mixture of intelligence and innocence.  It’s a part Nathalie Baye might have played in a Truffaut film.

 At the same time, this series is a descendant, not a copy.  The cast is multicultural, the relationships are not all heterosexual, the visual style is contemporary. The acting is first rate.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see several win acting awards in the U.S.: Camille Cottin (as Andrea), the fearless Laura Calamy (Noemie), Gregory Mantel as Gabriel, and perhaps more.

 Still, the overall affect of the series—intelligent, ironic, yet sincere, with moments of exhilarating humanity—is very French, and goes with the language, the gestures, and the style. (Even the older male agent Mathias dresses with understated French elegance.)  In terms of narrative style, the characters may be at time excessive, but are never cartoons.  This perhaps most of all is what viewers of the best French films expect.

 In a fourth season episode, Gabriel and his ravishing, now ex-girlfriend Sofia, are talking at a party.  He tells her a tall tale which she is believing, until he admits he’s making it up.  But he says that her wide-eyed belief “is very moving.”  Those are words, and this is a moment, that in my experience can only occur in a French film.

  Maybe a British series about a talent agency based on these characters can work.  But it will be very, very different.