The French comedy Dix Pour Cent (Call My Agent!) ran for four seasons and with English and Hindi remakes, became a popular streaming phenomenon.
The series was set within the competitive and frenzied world of show business. As egos clashed and crises mounted, the talent agency ASK (Agence Samuel Kerr) shut down after the death of Kerr and subsequent internal troubles. The four agents from the office branch off on their own. Five years later, creator Fanny Herrero and director Émilie Noblet reunite the ensemble for Call My Agent! The Movie and take them out of the office set to a remote outdoor location.
Andrea Martel (Camille Cottin), is on the verge of directing her first film, when things start to fall apart. Her lead actor ditches her for a Hollywood movie, her producer opts out, her lead actress Laetitia Casta fires her agent, Mathias (Thibault de Montalembert), and hires his daughter Camille (Fanny Sidney), leading him to hit back at the already embattled Andrea. In an emergency she has to turn to the manic Noemie (Laure Calamy) to step in as producer, and she happens to be Mathias’s girlfriend, whom she breaks up with, to step out of his dominating shadow.
When Noemie wrecks Andrea’s chance to cast George Clooney (in a charming cameo), by insulting him, Andrea is forced to approach rival agent Gabriel (Grégory Montel) to cast his client Vincent Macaigne, who is in a wellness facility and working through mental health issues.
Once they reach the scenic rural location, on the first day of shoot, a mishap results in Laetitia breaking her nose, due to Vincent’s fault, and everything else quickly collapses. To make it all worse, the harried Andrea is in the middle of a custody battle for her daughter with her ex-partner Colette (Ophelia Kolb).
A boar that is part of the shoot has star tantrums, the weather plays havoc and it turns out that the lead pair had a bitter history, and end up getting arrested.
When a flood and storm wreck the equipment and it turns out that Noemie opted for cheap insurance to save on costs, Andrea, who always has a can-do spirit, breaks down and gives up. Noemie’s struggling actor pal Hervé (Nicolas Maury) and Andreas’s mentor, Arlette (Liliane Rovère) try to salvage the situation.
French stars Casta and Macaigne playing themselves drive the main movie-within-a-movie plot, while George Clooney and Eva Longoria appear in hilarious cameos, like Isabelle Huppert, Cécile de France, Jean Dujardin, and Sigourney Weaver appeared in the series.
Call My Agent! The Movie (on Netflix), in French but with options of changing the audio to English and, of course, subtitles for those who want to watch the original, is funny, not in a laugh-out loud manner, but face-palming at the way disaster follows Andreas and Noemie. The film captures, with affection, the madness and unpredictability of moviemaking, when pieces of chaos can sometimes miraculously cohere to create art.
Director Emilie Noblet
Cast: Camille Cottin, Laetitia Casta, Laure Calamy and others
On Netflix