The following is the impression I had and the note I took while I was watching the movie. Before the screening, Jon mentioned that this was some sort of a “Sub” James Bond movie. I hope I am spelling “sub” correctly.
The overall comment that I have is that this is a counter-stereotype movie. Just like what Cervantes wants to do with Don Quijote to criticise those novels of caballerismo, the director is using this movie to criticise the 007-style movies. And the director actually expresses his intention through Christine, a student of sociology, which is not a very common act in movies.
For the first 1/3 of the movie, it’s a mix of all the stereotypes of 007 movie–heroic secret agent that never dies, beautiful bond girl who will eventually fall in love with “007”, a touch of exotic (Mexican) ambience, and a clever bad guy who dies or escapes in the end. However, with some exaggeration, it becomes a comedy in this movie.
Then with the intrusion of a maid vacumming, the movie takes place now in a real world in Paris, where it is always raining, and the leading actor is living a humble life as novel writer. He is exactly the opposite of 007: he has no love, no money, with a bad shape, and is struggling in his career as a novel writer. He’s written 10 (or maybe more?) novels as a serie with the same heroic secret agent and the same bad guy from Albania. In every novel the secret operation takes place somewhere exotic, however, he has never been to those places, and all the knowledge he knows comes only from a map of that place, some brochures and his imagination. So here we can talk about some of the construction of the image of Latin America.
Just like what Roland Barthes mentions in The Blue Guide, “[f]or the Blue Guide, men exist only as ‘types’. In Spain, for instance, the Basque is an adventurous sailor, the Levantine a light-hearted gardener, the Catalan a clever tradesman and the Cantabrian a sentimental highlander (Mythologies. Noonday Press, 1972, pp74-75), places exist only as “types” as well: in order to show to the readers/audience the world of Acapulco, all the author/movie director needs is a band of mariachis, some local dancers and the pyramid. And if I were a lazy director, I’d just replace the people with pandas, play some background music of a Chinese opera, and let the fight take place on the Great Wall, and I’ll have my own movie titled “The Man from Beijing“. Just don’t forget to add a lot of blood and sex into the movie, and this can be the next blockbuster. No wonder last year an article written by Artificial Intellegence entered into the final round of a literature competition in Japan. With all the stereotypes, the actual human intellegence may eventually give way to AI.
Of course, this movie is used as a weapon to fire at all the 007-stereotypes, so in the end, the secret agent who is always the representation of masculinity is feminized and falls in love with the bad guy who is no longer bad anymore but a cute guy (and I imagine they will live happily ever after…), and the beautiful heroine is abandoned, covered with mud, and there is no big blast or nuclear crisis.
Another thing Jon mentioned before the screening is how caracters tend to release a burden and become a different type once they cross the border to the South. It’s like what the author in this movie is doing: once in the novel that he writes, he is the God in this imaginary world and can do whatever he couldn’t do in the real world. South is always co-living with the North. The civilized need the barbarians to reflect their civilization, although we always doubt whether civilization exists in the almost 500 years of colonization.
Yet from my perspective, the more extraordinary people are in their imaginary world, the more frustration they’d get in the real one, because the contrast is bigger. So I really doubt that people could de-stress themselves by crossing the South border, as long as they have to get back to North in the end.
Lastly, I have some doubts about the movie.
- Why there is emphasis on the author in the real world keeping smoking?
- Why does the director use so much white in the movie? It’s comprehensible that the bad guy is always in black;however, while the secret agent wears from time to time white shirt, the bond girl is almost always in white, and the helicopter, and the car, and in the real world in the movie, there is a lot of white as well. I wonder if there is something in it.
- Why use classic music in the imaginary world of Acapulco? I remember one clip that the mariachi band playing Hendel, which is apparently very odd.
- Why do women in the real world always break glasses, like the maid, and Christine?
To conclude, I really like this movie, for it works perfectly as a comedy in the first part, and then after laughing a lot, it can get you to start thinking a little bit. I don’t like the fact that the director let Christine say about the 007-stereotype, which makes the movie academic.
Hi there! Yes, no doubt it’s true that this film sets out to satirize or parody 007-style movies; but like all such parodies (also the Austin Powers movies), this is also an homage. As such, its relationship to its “source” is a little more complicated and ambivalent, I think. It acknowledges, for instance, that these movies may not be great, but that they are still popular and serve a function. This is also, after all, Christine’s view within the movie itself.
I found the use of music interesting as well. I found it particulary interesting (if I remember correctly) during the the scene where Bob Saint Clair begins to seduce Tatiana on the beach there is a marachi playing. It seemeed to me that having the stereotypical music playing it tied into the theme of the south being a place of desire. Also the clothing that each character wore during this scene seemed to be more exotic or more “mexican”, to the least it was not typical western attire.