Michael Lonsdale

Just saw Munich, Spielberg's thriller about the Israeli assassination squad that avenged the murder of Olympic athletes in 72. I don't rate film very highly. But what I want to do here is draw attention to one of the secondary actors. He has one of those faces that you instantly recognise because you have seen him a dozen times. The trouble is you can't remember where. I refer to Michael, or sometimes Michel, Lonsdale, who plays the quintessentially amoral Frenchman named in the film only "Papa". The scene in which he presides over a extended family luncheon with millions of adoring grandchildren is utter tosh of course, as is the whole notion of his empire of information. I was just happy to see his jowly face again, and try to recall its previous outings. Two come to mind straight away. He was the baddy Hugo Drax in one of the great Roger Moore James Bonds, Moonraker. And in the 1972 Day of the Jackal, he played Claude Lebel, the detective whose inspired work foils James Fox's assassination bid on de Gaulle. In that film he has a moustache and no beard but the big cheeks are a giveaway. Further research reminds me that he was the abbot in The Name of the Rose, and Anton Grigoriev -- the Russian consul in Berne -- in the TV series Smiley's People. Actually he'd been in scores of films, most of them French, since the 1960s. He is half-and-half. His father was English and his mother French, and he was born in Paris in 1931. Interesting character.

Brice de Nice

There are three types of French film. First, the films that do sufficiently well that they travel abroad and form part of the general image of what constitutes French cinema. Second, the vast majority of films that flop at home and end up as late-night television repeats. And third, those films which will never be seen outside of France because their reference-points are too franco-français, but which are somehow perfect for the domestic market. A classic example of this last category is the new hit Brice de Nice. No-one will ever hear of it outside of France (and maybe Belgium and Switzerland) but it is a huge success at the box-office here -- arguably therefore a far better cultural insight than the normal "auteur" fodder. Brice de Nice (pronounced to rhyme with 'vice' for some reason) is an undemanding romp about a long-haired surf dude living on the Riviera. That is the first joke, because of course there are no waves in the Mediterranean. He wears a yellow T-shirt and black baggy trousers, and is obsessed by the Patrick Swayze film Point Break. Jean Dujardin, the actor who plays Brice, created the character on the stand-up circuit, and it was via the Internet that word of the film got about. Since it was released a couple of months ago it has achieved cult status among the school-going public. I went with my two eldest (aged 11 and 9) and they had to explain half the jokes. Brice's trademark is a downward chopping motion with the right arm, conducted to the word "Cassé!" Apparently this is what you chant in the playground when you beat someone in an argument. Everyone is doing it now, I'm told. Highly immature -- but good fun.
http://www.bricedenice.com/