Rio
gets top billing, but it will be Brasília most viewers will remember from this
classic Jean-Paul Belmondo escapade. One has to wonder what unreconstructed
Marxist architect Oscar Niemeyer thought of his utopian capitol city being
portrayed as the stomping ground of a wealthy oligarch, but it sure looks great
on-screen. Viewers’ will get a North by
Northwest perspective on his monumental buildings in Philippe de Broca’s
freshly restored, Oscar-nominated That
Man from Rio (trailer
here), which
opens this Friday at Film Forum, in honor of its fiftieth anniversary.
Adrien
Dufourquet is not really from Rio. He hails from a French working class
province. Dufourquet planned to spend his week’s leave from the army with his
high maintenance kind of-sort of fiancée, Agnès Villermosa, but as soon as he
arrives in Paris, she is abducted. Clearly, this is the work of the same gang
that heisted a rare Amazonian statuette from the Musée de L’Homme and also
kidnapped the curator, Professor Norbert Catalan, an old friend of Villermosa’s
late father.
Of
course, the Parisian cops are worse than useless, but Dufourquet is a tougher
cat to shake. In the more innocent early 1960s (before the proliferation of PLO
hijackings and September 11th), Dufourquet is able to bluff his way
onboard the transatlantic flight taking Villermosa and her abductors to Rio,
but nobody will listen to him once they arrive. Even though he is essentially a
fugitive himself, Dufourquet continues to pursue his fiancée, with the help of
several lucky turns and Sir Winston, a shoeshine boy from the favela.
It
turns out there are three “Maltec” statues that might hold the key to an even
greater treasure. Catalan acquired the Musée’s on a trip with Villermosa’s
father and their backer, De Castro, a Bond villain-looking financier (played by
Thunderball’s Adolfo Celi), who seems
to own the entire city of Brasília. (Frankly, he turns out to be a more
interesting character than Niemeyer might have preferred.)
One
can maybe see seeds of the future French spy spoof franchise OSS 117 in Rio, but Dufourquet is far more resourceful and resilient than Jean
Dujardin’s broadly comedic alter ego. His sequences shimmying around the ledges
of the Brasília construction sites also bring to mind the Hitchcock classic,
whereas the peaceful scenes of respite with the poor but hospitable favela
residents suggest the inspiration of Marcel Camus’ international smash hit Black Orpheus. As possible influences
go, those two 1959 films are pretty good ones.
With
Rio, Belmondo was well into the
process of transitioning from nouvelle vague icon to true superstar. To that
end, he does not simply rely on his on-screen charm, giving a surprisingly
physical performance as Dufourquet, both in terms of the action and slapsticky
comedy. He is not afraid to look slightly ridiculous or get a little muddy for
the sake of our entertainment. He also has okay chemistry with the somewhat icy
Françoise Dorléac, Catherine Deneuve’s sister, who would tragically die in a
car accident a little more than three years after the release of Rio.
