Five years after her agency ASK’s collapse, former agent Andréa (Camille Cottin) is directing her first film when her leading man quits and she fires her producer. Desperate to save the production, she recruits former assistant Noémie (Laure Calamy) and attempts to recast the film and avert disaster.
Making a movie about a TV show about the monstrous egos behind movies and television risks disappearing up your own satirical arse. Add a litany of cameos, including George Clooney as George Clooney and Eva Longoria as, you guessed it, Eva Longoria, and Call My Agent! The Movie sounds like a true over-indulgent meta nightmare. But this long-awaited sequel to the beloved TV series remains, against the odds, rather delightful.
Directing her debut feature, Andréa (Camille Cottin) discovers that managing a production is harder when you can’t simply make demands at increasing volume down the phone until everyone falls in line. With her leading man gone and the shoot in peril, she drafts in her former assistant turned reality-TV producer Noémie (Laure Calamy), while genial agent Gabriel (Grégory Montel) and the rest of ASK are also gradually dragged into the chaos.
Director Émilie Noblet, working from a screenplay co-written by series creator Fanny Herrero, has fun reversing the old power dynamic. Andréa, once charged with placating impossible filmmaker egos, has become one herself. Her increasingly desperate attempts to keep her film alive supply pleasing karmic retribution, while old resentments ensure the ASK reunion is hardly a warm group hug. The feature format inevitably loses some of the series’ nimble episodic rhythm, particularly as the crises pile up, but its refusal to treat any of this showbiz nonsense as terribly important keeps the self-indulgence largely at bay.
Cottin remains magnificent, with her Andréa capable of turning even a plea for help into an implied threat. Motherhood may have somewhat softened her, but she hasn’t been defanged. Watching this fierce consummate control freak discover that directing actually requires some diplomacy gives the film its sharpest comic edge. While the cameos occasionally threaten to tip it into Hollywood navel-gazing, they are thankfully fleeting enough to just remain fun asides. Call My Agent! The Movie is naturally more indulgent at feature length, but its barbs remain sharp enough to skewer any pomposity.
A potentially insufferable showbiz victory lap instead proves a witty, affectionate reunion for our favourite French talent agents. It’s occasionally indulgent and less nimble than the beloved series, but Camille Cottin remains excellent throughout.
