Speaking of Sunshine....

Blog Snippit of the Day
T Magazine 11/24/08


Jean-Paul Belmondo in ‘That Man From Rio,’ 1964. (Everett Collection)

What: Philippe de Broca’s “That Man From Rio,” 1964
Educational Value: 1960s cityscapes from Paris to Rio, archeology, Lost Civilization
Synopsis: A French soldier on furlough finds himself on a mad dash through Brazil in pursuit of his kidnapped girlfriend and the key to a lost civilization.

In this madcap adventure flick, one is never quite sure whether the exotic locations or the charming hero and heroine are the real stars.

Jean-Paul Belmondo stars as Private Adrien Dufourquet, a soldier on an eight-day leave who has only one thing on his mind: a romantic interlude with his girlfriend, Agnès Villermosa, played by Françoise Dorléac, Catherine Deneuve’s sister. Dufourquet, a cross between James Bond and Maxwell Smart, is clever and loveable yet never completely in control. No sooner is he reunited with Agnès than she is kidnapped as part of a quest to find the key to the lost civilization of the Maltecs, an ancient Amazonian people. Rewind to the opening scenes in Paris’s Museum of Man, where a trench-coated thug overlooks rare jewels to steal a ceramic figurine. Enter the preoccupied archaeologist who is the guardian of said figurine and you have the beginnings of a convoluted plot that takes Dufourquet from Paris to Rio de Janeiro (using the plane ticket he snatches from a wheelchair-bound army general) in hot pursuit of Agnès, who is connected to another ceramic figurine once owned by her father.

De Broca uses actual locations of Rio to stellar effect as we see Dufourquet dashing from downtown to the beaches of Copacabana and nimbly knocking off the thugs in glamorous settings as he gets closer to rescuing Agnès. When the pair tries to locate Agnès’s figurine in the garden of her childhood home, another chase ensues and…well, at this point in the film, forget about trying to figure out the plot and just sit back and enjoy the chase. It leads the couple to Brasilia — where one of the villains channels architect Oscar Niemeyer as he instructs his construction crew to make a building “look like dragonfly wings” — and finally to the jungles of the Amazon, where the real villain is finally revealed. Surreal settings, poison darts, crocodiles, car chases and chain-smoking detectives all add up to a zany, fast-paced adventure that is a witty spoof of 1960s Cold War thrillers.