Gotham Diary:
Be Nice to Brice
8 February 2012
Has anyone out there seen Brice de Nice, the 2005 comedy co-written by and starring Jean Dujardin? It is definitely a movie to bear in mind while you’re watching The Artist, if you can manage the cognitive dissonance. M Dujardin, who may receive an Academy Award for his suave performance in the latter film — he’s the compleat star that Old Hollywood never had, Douglas Fairbanks, Fred Astaire, Gary Cooper and Cary Grant all rolled into one — turns out to be no less a maestro when it comes to playing jerks. He’s Jack Black, Peter Sellers, Sid Caesar and Jackie Gleason all rolled into one. Throw in a little Buster Keaton for pathos — Jean Dujardin’s jerks are almost but not quite too lovable to be jerks.
My DVD of Brice de Nice offers no subtitles; I couldn’t even get the close-captioning to work. So I had no idea what the actors were saying most of the time. The only “dialogue” that was crystal clear occurred when Brice ploddingly read a newspaper story about his father’s arrest for money laundering, with his finger moving along the page. Language was not a barrier to understanding and enjoying the film, however. If it had been shot in Urdu, I’d have got it. All you really need to know is that 1991 classic, Point Break. If you know Point Break, you will understand why, for example, Brice, now that his allowance has been cut off by his father’s arrest for money laundering, and after he has failed to hold down a job as a waiter, wears two face masks of Jacques Chirac, one on the back of his head, when he attempts to hold up the Caisse de Nice. “Je suis le président de la Republique!” he declares. Break dancing ensues.
You may be aware that there isn’t much in the way of surf on the Côte d’Azur. But Brice is hopeful; he paddles out first thing every morning and sits wistfully on his board. When, later in the picture, no longer on the Mediterranean, he is confronted by an actual wave, well, you should see the look on his face.
There’s a very funny clip of Jean Dujardin on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon? He does an imitation of Robert De Niro, then an imitation of a camel, and then he combines them, doing a camel who is also Robert De Niro. In Brice de Nice, he offers another improvisatorial combination. It’s part Keanu Reeves and part 30 year-old moron with shoulder-length bottle-blond hair that keeps getting in his face. The little twisty shake of his head that gets the hair out of his eyes is pure Keanu Reeves, although I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen Mr Reeves actually do it. The deeper joke is that Brice idolizes the other star of Point Break, Patrick Swayze.
I expect that a subtitled edition of Brice de Nice will be available sooner or later. Sure, it’s dopey, but, like the two OSS 117 movies, it’s a riff on movies that Americans are very familiar with, and it’s much, much nicer than either of the Hangover movies.