Yahoo Movies Call My Agent: get au fait with the smash hit French comedy-drama
Celebs might have failed at 2020 (see: Gal Gadot’s Imagine, Kim K’s island bash, every influencer everywhere) but the return to Netflix of the French comedy Call My Agent! should ensure that their reputation improves in 2021.
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Following the shenanigans of a fictitious Parisian talent agency, the acclaimed comedy-drama is packed to the rafters with stars knowingly playing themselves. Here are five reasons to tune in …
The cameos
With an A-list address book at the ready (that of the former agent and co-creator Dominique Besnehard), each episode of Call My Agent! features a famous person sending themselves up in believable ways: Juliette Binoche flailing on the Cannes stage in bent ostrich feathers; Isabelle Huppert losing her voice through superhuman overwork; grand dame Béatrice Dalle going to war over gratuitous nudity. How will Charlotte Gainsbourg, Jean Reno and Sigourney Weaver make spectacles of themselves in season four?
The drama
The stars may bring their fair share of it (tax evasion, marital spats, existential meltdowns), but it’s the agents cleaning up the mess who shine. Take the scene in the pilot when a beleaguered assistant unintentionally hangs up on one of the agency’s biggest clients, and his boss erupts in a volley of “Oh putain, putain, putain” – like The Wire’s famous “Fuck” scene, but deliciously devoid of composure.
The putdowns
Call My Agent! is nothing if not catty. See Andréa raging at 87-year-old Nouvelle Vague icon Françoise Fabian for being flaky: “No, but, for real, at what age do these tantrums stop?” Or Fabian’s response when the agency’s director dies after swallowing a wasp: “Just goes to show, you can have a dashing life and a shitty death.”
The style
It’s in the opening credits: an actress glides from a Marie-Antoinette-style costume fitting to tight jeans and Converse to an LBD on the red carpet. And it’s in the agents’ wardrobes as much as their clients’: witness the show’s breakout star Camille Cottin as Andréa, dressed in red stiletto boots and a crumpled button-down. Glamming up for a big premiere? No, she’s on maternity leave.
The parodies
For an industry not given to self-deprecation, Call My Agent!’s send-ups of le cinema push the show into greatness. For example, an auteur spitting: “A script is there to be destroyed,” as he throws it at the crew. Then there’s François Hollande’s partner Julie Gayet and rapper JoeyStarr getting it on as a period set literally catches fire around them, but no one shouts “cut” because the visual is so beautiful. And, in fairness, it is.
Season 4 of Call My Agent! starts Thursday 21 January on Netflix
