Searching for six hours—well, more like 315 minutes—of Trump-free consciousness? Then, if you haven’t already, sign up for Netflix and check out Dix Pour Cent, aka 10 Percent, aka Call My Agent! (which is what Netflix calls it), a catch as catch can tale of agents, actors, directors, wives, mistresses, boyfriends, sons, daughters, and other hangers on in the City of Light, all revolving around that most important, or at least most self-important, of all worlds, le cinéma.
I wish I could write an intelligent review of Call My Agent!, but, well, I can’t. Usually when I write my reviews I cheat a little (or a lot) by relying on Wikipedia or somebody so I can identify all the characters, and the actors who play them, and not make any glaring errors in my plot summaries, etc., but in this case I can’t because, sadly, Call My Agent! doesn’t seem to be that much of a thing—only one season (of two) is available in the U.S.—so I’m pretty much a trail-blazer here and I won’t be providing much more than a once over easy on this one. I’m particularly at a loss because the series features numerous cameos from famous French film folk, about whom I unfortunately know nothing.
We begin with a crisis, of course. In la vie de Bohème life without a crisis is no life at all, but rather death. Agent Gabriel Sarda (Grégory Montel) is struggling with a tempestuous diva, Cécile, who is struggling to learn how to ride a horse, which she had earlier, and falsely, claimed she knew how to do. But her burden is small compared to Gabriel’s, because he’s learned that the deal of a lifetime—of several, in fact—a trilogy with Quentin Tarantino—oui, that Quentin Tarantino!—has fallen through because Quentin thinks Cécile’s too old. Too old! Jesus! Why not just kill her? It would be so much more humane!
But for the moment there’s a more immediate crisis, one that, fortunately, is a lot more manageable. Cécile isn’t supposed to be out riding a horse. She’s supposed to be in Paris for some sort of photo shoot at some impossibly stunning salon that, unless you’re Louis Quatorze, you can’t possibly afford. Gabriel brings her in, still reeking of the stable, but, never mind, Cécile may not be able to ride a thoroughbred, but she is one. A quick wardrobe change and she makes the room look shabby. Mission accomplished! Well, the easy part.
Gabriel knows all too well that discretion is the better part of valor, by far, so he leaves the bad news for later. He has to get back to the agency, ASK, aka Samuel Kerr Agency, because Samuel Kerr, the founding father and beloved papa, is going on vacation, for the first time in his life! Gabriel makes it back just in time, giving us a glimpse of the rest of the cast, including Papa Samuel (Alain Rimoux), the Yves Montand-ish Mathias Barneville (Thibault de Montalembert), a cute gay guy, a couple of seen it all French broads (okay, they’re all French, but these are like French French—old French), and Andréa Martel (Camille Cottin), who, it will emerge, is a bit of a diva on her own.
While the farewell party is going on, a sweet jeune fille wanders in. “Just give me your resume,” Sofia, the stunning biracial receptionist (Stéfi Celma), tells her briskly (in French, of course). “We’ll get back to you.” But shy Camille (Fanny Sidney) isn’t an actress. She just wants to see M. Barneville, and, no, she doesn’t have an appointment. “He’s very busy,” Sofia tells her. But when summoned Mathias appears with surprising quickness. Do we have a plot? I think we do!
Mathias is not at all happy to see Camille, suggesting that she is either his mistress or his bastard, and his nervous line of questioning strongly suggests the latter. Camille is newly arrived in Paris, from that region of France that is, basically, not Paris. She clearly likes the place and isn’t planning on leaving, even though she has not a euro, and even though Mathias clearly isn’t planning on giving her one.
While Mathias is struggling to get rid of his bastard daughter, Andréa is getting all boss from Hell on her helpless assistant, who can’t keep track of all the people she’s lying to on Andréa’s behalf, or even remember which lies she told whom. Plus, there’s Andréa’s love life. She’s into chicks, but there’s a lot of turnover, and it’s hard to remember who she’s avoiding and who she’s screwing, in part because Andréa can’t always remember herself. The assistant, acting out every assistant’s dreams, tells Andréa to take a taxi to enfer. She storms out of Andréa’s office, out into the reception area, where waif Camille is still wandering about in confusion.
“All right then, go to Hell!” shouts Andréa (more or less). “You! Are you looking for a job?”
The answer to that question is not no, and so off we go into the wonderful world of dix pour cent. “We have no lives,” Andréa explains. Their clients are their lives. They live in shitty apartments, they have no money, no husbands, no children, no nothing! But what do they have? They have art! They are the unseen, unheralded, yet all-important grease without whom the adamantine wheels of artistic ego would shatter one another to pieces and bring the sacred world of cinema to a splintering halt.
Yes, the life of an agent is always Hell, but it’s about to get a lot tougher for the folks at ASK, because scarcely has Papa Sam reached his vacation destination—the sunny beaches of Brazil—than the word comes back that he’s dead! Dead? How is this even possible, demands Mathias from the officious official informing them of Samuel’s decease. “He ate a wasp,” the official explains—that being, apparently, the sort of answer you get from the French government when something bad happens.1
Sam’s death is a particular stunner because he was, clearly, the only grown-up at the agency. Gabriel, Mathias, Andréa, and all the rest blink like kittens suddenly exposed to sunlight. We have to pay our bills now? And our taxes? But Sam always took care of that!
ASK’s problems continue to mount. Sam owned a controlling share of the agency, and he died intestate, so all his shares pass to his widow, Hélène (Gabrielle Forest). She’s a grand old femme, to be sure, but how do we know that the grand old femme won’t sell us all out and retire to the Riviera? Blood is in the water and the sharks are circling. And what about our clients? Those artists don’t give a damn about anyone or anything but themselves!
The uncertainty puts a double strain on the standard uncertainty of the dix pour cent business—the constant caressing, cajoling, and hand-holding of friend and foe alike, deceiving your friends and servicing your foes, running madly to stay in place on a frenzied carousel. But—and here is the kicker—somehow it all works. The lies that seem to lead to disaster lead instead to art! The two deadly enemies you booked for the same film, for the director they both loathe? “I can use that energy,” the director gloats, rubbing his hands together in glee. That impossible director who brings in everything over budget and overdue? His reworking of the memoirs of the duc de Saint-Simon is a smash!2
Yes, the madeleines here are a bit too sweet, too candy-coated—too many grand receptions, shoots, and gatherings in impossibly elegant surroundings, too many pretty girls waiting on “you” hand and foot, so much 18th-century privilege handed out to our 21st-century strivers/survivors.3 Even Andréa’s apartment, which was supposed to be a mess, is a little gem. People in Paris have killed for less—for far less—I’m sure.
As the first season ends, the gang at ASK, having survived everything, even a government audit, gather to drink Sam’s private stock of whiskey to celebrate a coup that’s going to assure that the agency will remain independent. Alas, the coup doesn’t quite come off, but so what? They aren’t dead yet, and there’s nothing wrong with getting drunk on the boss’s whiskey. Besides, as one of the old broads puts it, “Whenever I get depressed I go to a movie and that cheers me up.”
Okay, way too on the nose, but I enjoyed myself without the boss’s whiskey. Hey, Nextflix! Season deux! Now!
Afterwords
Dix Pour Cent, directed by “César winning” director Cédric Klapisch, gives an unconscious representation of the “Paris Provincial” world consciously presented in Julie Delpy’s Two Days in Paris4—an incestuous assembly of self-indulgent enablers whose feckless life is made possible both by the extraordinary artistic treasures of Paris and massive government subsidies (largely funded, in turn, by taxes on Hollywood films), in the illusion that they are adding to those treasures.5 It’s also reminiscent of Hollywood films like Woody Allen’s Café Society and Martin Scorcese’s The Aviator, which simultaneously “expose” and sentimentalize Tinsel Town.
- Sam’s cause of death is grounds for a funny running gag as the cast must repeatedly explain to grieving friends from other agencies that, no, Sam did not die in an orgy. But why else would one go to Brazil? A wasp? Are you sure? ↩︎
- Many of the “impossible” people here are celebrities playing themselves, which would be a lot funnier if I knew who they were. ↩︎
- Le meilleur century for the French was really the 17th—in the 18th they got their asses kicked by the British too often—but the 18th looks more comfortable. ↩︎
- Delpy starred in the film, wrote, directed, produced, and edited the film, and also composed the score. Charlie Chaplin, eat your heart out! (Actually, Chaplin matched Delpy, although he sometimes had help with the script and he always had help—a lot of help—with the music.) ↩︎
- There is, unsurprisingly, not a hijab in sight, and the few blacks we see are seamlessly integrated into French society. Hey, this show is about escaping your problems, not solving them. ↩︎
