“Call My Agent!” puts a human spin on show business
The talent agents in the French comedy “Call My Agent!” stand out from their fictional brethren: They care.
“You must accept making a little less money to make a good movie,” one of them shockingly says in the opener of Season 4. She means it, too.
Crazy, right? It’s not the kind of line we would expect from one of the crass, venal middlemen Hollywood tends to enjoy portraying.
On paper, “Call My Agent!” whose fourth and final season dropped Jan. 21 on Netflix, is yet another entry in the wellstocked category of self-referential showbiz series that find humor in watching real-life stars play exaggerated versions of themselves. “The Larry Sanders Show,” “Entourage,” “Extras,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Episodes” trod similar winking metaterrain.
What makes the French show different is less that it takes place in a Paris so evocatively picturesque that you keep expecting Audrey Hepburn to pop out underneath the Eiffel Tower. And it’s less about the impressive guest stars, even though it doesn’t hurt that they include Juliette Binoche, Isabelle Adjani, Monica Bellucci, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Jean Dujardin and Isabelle Huppert.
Where “Call My Agent!” drastically departs from its American and British counterparts is that the employees of the fictional agency at its center, ASK, have good intentions and genuinely love the art they help create.
Throughout the years, we have watched ASK’s senior agents — Andréa (breakout star Camille Cottin), Arlette (Liliane Rovère), Gabriel (Grégory Montel) and Mathias (Thibault de Montalembert) — act as managers, fixers, matchmakers, babysitters and shrinks for their clients. They’re on call at all hours to keep actors, producers and directors happy and to ensure that they work in the best conditions possible.
Of course, they are trying to earn their paycheck — the original title, “Dix pour cent,” or “Ten percent,” refers to their commission — but there is always a sense they want an honorable result. They actually enjoy going to the movies, and at one point we see Andréa grab a copy of the highbrow film magazine “Positif.”
Similarly, the agents’ assistants, Hervé (Nicolas Maury), Noémie (Laure Calamy) and Camille (Fanny Sidney), may be shrewd, but they steadfastly support one another, their bosses and the clients. Whenever there is back-stabbing — everybody’s human — there tends to be a good reason, as when Gabriel commits a betrayal out of love in Season 4.
Certainly the job is not easy, especially in the new season, when ASK finds itself in deep financial trouble — which is odd considering the company seems to have half of the French screen industry on its roster, but never mind. The newly promoted Andréa must make tough decisions, all while managing her frustrated partner and their toddler. Still, she can’t bring herself to cut moral corners.
This is rather different from the way the profession is usually portrayed in the United States. Agents in American shows are often cartoonish, either wholly conniving (Bebe on “Frasier”) or wholly ridiculous (Estelle, Joey’s chainsmoking agent on “Friends”). Many fall somewhere in the power-hungry middle, like Jeremy Piven’s Ari Gold in “Entourage.”
Sure, a few jerky agents pop up here and there in the
French show, and other industry people occasionally behave in reprehensible ways. But everybody usually turns out to have a hidden quality, maybe even two. Only the new Season 4 character Élise (Anne Marivin), from the rival agency Starmédia, does not appear to have any redeeming traits besides her ecologically friendly mode of transportation. Who knows, though: Had the series continued, we might have discovered a good side to Élise, too.
The excellent Season 4 opener milks Charlotte Gainsbourg’s real-life whisper-soft voice for laughs, and the episode easily ranks among the show’s funniest. (Several of the juicy anecdotes or ill-advised behavior assigned to guests actually did happen in real life, but to other stars.)
Through it all, “Call My Agent!” eschews an unappealing trait that plagues so many contemporary shows: cynicism.
“I’m not talking about money; I’m talking about dignity and loyalty,” Arlette tells Mathias in the first season. The series keeps that sentiment close to heart until the very end, no matter how unrealistic it might be.