Triple agent (2004) User Reviews

Sense of the time, and based on fact

[GwydionMW · 7/10 · 26 March 2006]

This film takes you to another world, the uncertain times between the two World Wars, though no one at the time knew it. It concerns White Russians living in France, and uncertain which way they should jump if there was another war.

Do they team up with Germany, their enemy from the Great War, and now much further from their own ideas, run by vulgar Nazis rather than a right-wing elite close to their own view? Or do they keep their heads down and hope to avoid upsetting France's Popular Front government, which does not like them? How do they react to the Spanish Civil War?

There are also surviving links with Red Russia, especially with Tukhachevsky, from a similar social background but the Red Army's top commander.

The real-life basis concerns General Evgenii Miller (Dobrinsky) and General Nikolai Skoblin (Fiodor). I'll not say more, to avoid spoilers. Just that the film does not give a definite solution to the mystery, though it points to one. You can find one account on the Wikipedia. On the DVD you find Skoblin's niece giving a very different interpretation.

Despite unresolved mysteries, and some liberties taken with solid fact, I found this a very watchable film.

On the cusp of WWII, a leader of the White Rusians in Paris may just be a spy . . . but for whom?

[maksquibs · 7/10 · 25 April 2008]

Though denied a commercial theatrical release in the States (American indie fodder from Sundance now all but fills the old art house maw), this is a typically involving, if determinedly talky, pic from vet helmer Eric Rohmer. Known for his pointillist studies in manners & mores 'francais,' this late work tackles large political issues with a similar minimalist approach. In the years leading up to WWII, the last of the White Russians in Paris are struggling to maintain a presence just as the communist Popular Front comes to power and Stalin launches his deadliest internal purge back in the USSR. Rohmer keeps his focus on the wife of a Paris-based White Russian official as she watches for clues that might indicate just what side of the political fence this unflappably reasonable man leans toward. Or is he merely acting different parts for different situations? Rohmer's film-making is all essentials now, but the gusts of dialogue & functional camera set-ups needn't fool you. Rohmer remains an intensely visual artist with the easy mastery of the art that conceals art. Everyone is superb in their roles, but watch for Cyrielle Clair as a wealthy gossiping friend, she's Parisian chic itself.

Good acting but talky and slow.

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 21 August 2012]

acting seems very natural--story not engaging One thing I have to say about "Triple Agent" is that the acting seemed very natural and convincing. The actors and director (Eric Rohmer in one of his last films) did a very nice job. On the other hand, the film is extremely talky--very, very little actually happens and when things occur, you mostly just hear about them. This makes for a slow film--one that needed some energy infused into it.

The film is about a couple--Arsinoé (who is Greek) and her White Russian husband, Fiodor. When I say 'White Russian' I mean that he is a an anti-communist Russian living in Paris after the Russian Revolution. He heads an organization of fellow expatriates and is clearly anti-Soviet. However, as the movie SLOWLY progresses, Arsinoé hears a lot from her husband that confuses her. He seems awfully friendly with the Nazis AND the Communists. And, his business trips to Belgium actually take him to Berlin. What gives?

As I said already, not much happens in the film--or at least you don't get to see anything. It's all told through conversations at Arsinoé's home. This style of storytelling is really weak...and the film lost my interest despite the fine acting. A weak script dooms what COULD have been a much more interesting film.

This Semi-True Life Tale Really Makes You Think.

[mbyrne-3 · 19 April 2004]

As is explained in the prologue to the film, it is based on a true story, although some names, situations and facts have been changed or added. The addition of any facts I feel were probably few, as the film wanted to give a sense of the unknown. The use of historical french newsreel footage throughout gives an partial documentary feel to the film, yet the fine direction by Eric Rohmer, editing and quality of acting draws you straight back into the story every time.

I came away from seeing this film at the Hong Kong Film Festival 2004 with many thoughts. The film has been very well written as a pre-World War II drama/thriller. With many twists and turns in the plot, most of them between the lead characters, Fiodor a 'white russian' (a russian against Joseph Stalins communist ideals) and his greek wife Arsinoe, who live together in Paris, the russian man being 'in exile'.

This is the kind of film that I could watch a hundred times and always come out at the end with different opinion of Fiodor, such is the complexity of the story. The acting benefits well for using actors with applicable nationality/heritage, ie Fiodor, russian, played by Serge Renko and Arsinoe, greek, played by Katerina Didaskalu. Giving the accent the right 'edge', especially in the case of Serge Renko, as the characters speak mainly french in the film. Serge also gives a proud russian 'stiffness' to his character making his behaviour very creditable.

The locations selected for the filming were well chosen and the set's well thought out. Some people may find this film a little faltering, but to me it felt as if the screenplay writer wanted to interfere as little as possible with the original true-life source material. Leaving the viewer to make up their own mind.

An entertaining film that I would watch again, if only to try and make up my mind about Fiodor. Watch it, think about it and then watch it again is my advice.

Rating 8.5-9/10

Eric Rohmer as an Acquired Taste

[gradyharp · 7/10 · 11 December 2006]

Eric Rohmer will undoubtedly sustain in cinema history as a unique writer and director of French films. He is far more interested in dialogue, conversation among his characters, and ideas than he is in plot or storyline development. His films affect many as too didactic, too much like a lecture series on current events or historical events to be considered a movie. Perhaps that is the case, as watching a Rohmer film takes total concentration and thinking.

Such is the case for his 2004 TRIPLE AGENT. Set in Paris of 1936-37, it is essentially a re-thinking of a true story that about a spy, a bit of history that is still unsolved. To understand this film requires a working knowledge of the political movements intertwining during the time: France's Popular Front, Hitler's rising influence in Europe, the Stalinist era, the Spanish Civil War with Franco and his adversaries, etc. The mix is all placed in the thoughts and discussions of Fyodor Voronin (Serge Renko), his Greek painter wife Arsinoé (Katerina Didaskalu) and their interactions with the changing people of the political ploys (played with sincere verve by Cyrielle Claire, Grigori Manukov, Dimitri Rafalsky, Nathalia Krougly, Amanda Langlet, Jeanne Rambur, Georges Benoît, Emmanuel Salinger among the large and confusing cast). The 'story' emerges from Fyodor's relationship to the political leanings that pull his attention away from Arsinoé and the complications of his physical structure with his intense involvement in the political and ideological climes.

The film works for those with enough savvy to catch all the intrigues of that period in European history. But for a film so completely dependent on rhetoric and smart dialogue this project suffers greatly from the poor subtitles: while most of the French is translated for us, much of the Russian and German is not, as though we all have access to those languages. The result is a static, dry, intense film in which much is lost due to technical flaws. The cast is excellent but the editing and clarity of each character's role falls by the wayside far too often. Rohmer's genius is there, but it is an acquired taste. Would that the viewer had the background knowledge somehow supplied to support the fine story that is being related! Grady Harp

Spy-cinema is not Rohmer's business...

[rainking_es · 7/10 · 11 February 2006]

The action takes place in France, year 1936... An anti-Communist Russian exile that was on the White Army has to do such juggling acts to survive in those dangerous times.

Those who hate Eric Rohmer's works, his intellectual halo, his never ending dialogs will definitely hate "Triple Agent" as well. Yes, there are so much conversations, so many dissertations... and eventually you may lost the thread of the plot. I mean, this movie is not like "Summer tale", here you got stuff like spying and so, you have to know who's who, and that's pretty hard if the characters don't stop talking about anything. Maybe I'll have to watch it again so I get everything figured out.

PS: I'd like to underline the work of wonderful Greek actress Katerina Didaskalu. She's fascinating, and I hadn't have the occasion of watching her in a movie before.

My rate: 6.5/10

Why not just read the screenplay?

[Jonathan Dore · 3/10 · 27 December 2006]

Roehmer is so uninterested in visual artistry -- or even the nuts and bolts of composition, framing, lighting or colour -- and his characters are so obsessively, almost oppressively verbose, that it's a mystery why Triple Agent is a film at all. At most it may as well be a stage play, so little does it use the possibilities of cinema. Better perhaps as a radio play, or even a straightforward piece of prose on the page. Seldom has a cinematic adaptation managed to add so little to a story.

Among the actors, Katerina Didaskalu shines out for her naturalism as much as her beauty. Serge Renko has fine control of his physical mannerisms, but like all the actors, there is so little variation in the pace with which he delivers dialogue that the effect is almost robotic. The other actors form perhaps the most densely wooden ensemble of stiffness I've ever seen on the screen. Talented directors are often able to coax beautifully natural performances from non-professional actors, but here Roehmer exhibits what can only be described as an anti-Midas touch, turning his presumably professional cast(?) into almost comically inept living cardboard, grinding through their lines as if reading them straight off the idiot board. The reason, of course, is the excruciatingly stilted script: it is simply impossible to make it sound as if these are words that would come out of people's mouths. Since Roehmer is responsible for script as well as direction, this fault too must be laid at his door. Triple Agent is a sad but instructive example of the stultifying collapse of self-critical powers in someone who has been admired for so long he can no longer remember how to improve on his first impulses.

The film critic Mark Cousins says a lot of things I don't agree with, but he was right on the button when he noted that, unlike novelists, painters, composers, or conductors, even the greatest film directors almost never produce their best work as they get older. Can you think of a great film by a director in his/her 80s? I can't (Kurosawa's Madadayo, in my experience, is the only one that even comes near). It's an axiom that Triple Agent certainly doesn't come anywhere close to violating.

Not your daily dose of 007

[Artemis-9 · 9/10 · 8 July 2004]

Slow paced, and using a lot of dialogue, this film demands an attentive viewing. Decidedly, not recommended for people in a haste, wishing for a short respite between work and home. This film is Art, and History. Selected Pathé News reels from the period preceding World War 2 give us the context in which evolves a "White Russian" officer and his "Greek refugee" wife, living in Paris before, and during Nazi occupation. Is he a right-wing Russian, playing for the Nazis against a Communist France? Is he an underground agent of the Soviets, not opening his game even to affiliated communist friends? Is he a Nazi duping everyone else, as his wife once suspects? Is she as innocent as she tells, or is she a knowing part of her husband's triple spying schemes, or at least part of it? Spying is a question of technology, and that is shown in the end of the film, though the degree of technology used before our times of satellites seem ludicrous, but were terrific then. Spying is mostly a question of Humint (acronym for human intelligence), yesterday as today. French director Rohmer gives a master lesson in politics, History, human behaviour, love, and intelligence for all cinema lovers, based on true facts not fully explained even to this day. Highly recommended to spies of all colours, too - and they are legion...

No satisfaction in this (may contain spoilers)

[tarif · 1/10 · 3 May 2005]

I was very disappointed by a slow and unimaginative camera and cutting, artificial and complicated dialogs, an aching scenario and some contradictions in the settings, e.g. the flat where the couple lives, being placed in a popular, poor context has an elevator... the more bourgeois house where the white Russians have their offices being without. Another element: the central couple is meant to be poor but drives a big family car. When the white Russians confront the main character in the office, they mention a taxi downstairs. He gets away and the pursuing white Russians come down to the street where no taxi waits. Later in the movie it is revealed that the main character hid in another apartment of the building - only in that case there should have been a taxi in front of the house. No, with all due respect, but this is lousy. I watched the DVD version with bonus elements, especially an extensive interview of an historian and one member of one family involved in the historical events. I'd like to mention the shaky sound quality and unnerving noises of a badly fixed microphone. I wondered whether anybody checked the sound before putting it on the DVD... Stay away from it - you'd be annoyed!

Rohmer does a spy film - but not the kind you expect

[Andy-296 · 8/10 · 7 October 2006]

Eric Rohmer makes a spy film – though as one critic puts it, that doesn't make him likely to be a front runner to direct the next James Bond movie. Set on 1936, under the shadow of the Popular Front victory in France's elections, and based on the real life case of Russian spy Nikolai Skoblin, the movie is mostly about people in closed rooms chatting about politics. But most of the talk seems intelligent and engaging (by the way, the movie follows the real case closely, if you believe the Wikipedia article about Skoblin). The actors are fine, as usual in Rohmer films – Renko is slippery as the titular spy, and Langlet seems lovely as its naive communist neighbor. Now the Popular Front victory of the time probably means next to nothing to most people today – but it was probably a life moving experience for Rohmer – who was 16 at that time. In a way, this film is about Rohmer again settling scores against the French left, though thankfully, his conservative politics aren't as overbearing as in "The Lady and the Duke".

115 wasted minutes...

[rogermccarthy · 2/10 · 15 January 2008]

I wouldn't have believed it possible for a boring film to be made out of the Miller/Skoblin/Plevitskaya story - which has sinister Nazi and Soviet spies, impoverished old Russian emigres plotting away in cheap Parisian cafes, a larger than-life popular singer, kidnappings, tortures, murders and betrayals galore - but Rohmer has managed to do exactly that.

In fact other than giving him the excuse to write great turgid gobbets of expository dialogue about the Popular Front, Stalin, Trotsky etc (which must have gained him major brownie points amongst those elderly Paris intellectuals who managed to stay awake through the premiere) it is very difficult to know why Rohmer made this film at all - unless its all a pretentiously backhanded tribute to Vladimir Nabokov whose 1943 short story the Assistant Producer covered the same territory and is written from the point of view of a Hollywood film producer.

As other reviewers have pointed out even by Rohmer's standards this film is anti-cinematic - with by far the most striking visual images being the newsreel clips inserted at various points and which alone break up the verbose tedium.

Worse it completely inverts the true story on which it is supposedly based by making the 'triple agents' wife an innocent.

While the details will remain obscure until the relevant files in the Soviet archives become available (assuming they still exist), historians seem unanimous that the General's wife Nadia Plevitskaya - in reality a popular Russian folk singer and not a Greek painter - was every bit as active a Soviet agent as her husband.

Certainly she had happily served the Reds during the revolution and was singing for one of their army units when she was captured/'liberated' by her future husband - and if she was not a Soviet spy from the very beginning was presumably a cynical opportunist who stayed loyal to the Whites only until their money and hope of ever leading a counter-revolution evaporated and then returned to her previous allegiance taking her husband with her.

Even Nabokov who had met the woman and in 1943 evidently did not believe her to be a Soviet spy, unmercifully mocks her vulgarity and stupidity in his short story.

Anyone further from Rohmer's gentle Greek naif would be difficult to imagine.

Rohmer's Voronin seems rather closer to the real Skoblin - and particularly to Nabokov's version - but even his character never really becomes that interesting as whatever evil he is doing (and can you conceive of anything more evil than having your close friends and colleagues successively kidnapped and tortured to death by their worst enemies)is always kept offscreen and unreal.

All in all a complete waste of two hours and whatever you paid to buy/rent the film.

Whatever happened to the cinema maxim "show don't tell"?

[awillawill · 4/10 · 15 January 2007]

Talk, talk, talk, talk. That's all it was. Where was the action? I can't recall seeing a film that was less suited to its medium. If I had a better grasp of French, I am sure I would have been able to sit with my eyes closed, regarding it as a radio play. To add to this, the male lead, Serge Renka, lacked any real impact on screen and was dull, dull, dull. On the other hand, Katerina Didakalu was quite impressive, considering she had very little to bounce off. The more I think about this film, the lower I rate it as a movie. Other comments on the film indicate that some people thought highly of Triple Agent, but would they have been so impressed if it had been the work of someone less prestigious than Eric Rohmer? I think not.

A. Williams

As I remember it's not conventionally thrilling, but it did hold my attention greatly

[Quinoa1984 · 8/10 · 10 June 2006]

It's a good sight to see that Eric Rohmer's latest film- one that I saw on the same day I saw Godard's Notre Musique- is finally released on DVD. Because, frankly, I was a little befuddled why I didn't see it get release in American theaters after it was screened that day I saw it at the NY film festival. It's a curious entry in that it isn't one of Rohmer's typical relationship/'moral' stories, and at the same time is working somewhat against its genre type. Here is a thriller that has that same deep fascination with its psychology and morality of the characters like Hitchcock, while perhaps lacking the wit and excitement of the master. But there are also major political implications in the works here, and the characters know this very well. It's before the times of Melville's Army of Shadows in that there isn't even a resistance against the Germans- just the brewing of something odd &/or rotten amongst the Germans, Russians and Spanish.

I remember quite clearly how much I appreciated and had a good view of these times through the struggles Rohmer painted in this couple of Arsinoe (Katerina Didaskalu) and Fiodor (Serge Renko). It's interesting too to see how Arsinoe is basically apolitical in the early part of the film, and yet through the circumstances that follow both health-wise and elsewhere in the world her views begin to change. At the same time there is a spying sub-plot that is given weight by the attention to the scenes with the characters as opposed to just outright action. There's something that is fond for a movie viewer when seeing such difficult times portrayed simply, but with the conflicts brimming at the seams. It's not only about the political toss-and-turning going on, but about the loss of their insulated relationship, and what ultimately leads to what becomes of them. It's based on a true story as well, which adds some weight to it, and it's also as I recall filmed with the clarity that I've seen in the other (few) Rohmer works I've come across. A worthwhile viewing at the festival, and hopefully will get some airplay on IFC or Sundance or other for fans of the old Cashiers alumni.

Complex, profound, clairvoyant...

[nicoge · 10/10 · 30 April 2006]

Eric Rohmer masterfully uses Paris as a canvas to brush the complex profiles of his characters, a quartet of retired White Russian Generals, a Greek painter married to a member of the quartet and their friends exiled in 1937 Paris.

Rohmer's mastery: His use of authentic buildings of the period with subtle deco stylization and other White Russian meeting points (the canteen of the Rachmaninov conservatory and a wooden Orthodox church near Butte-Chaumont), along with brilliant dialogues subtly lit with conversation on Picasso, Abstraction and realism in Art. Both the Communist couple and the White Russian couple in the movie will be steam-rolled by the events. Rohmer's use of newsreels is also extremely symbolic. The Paris World Fair of 1937 is shown with its stone colossus in the competing Soviet and Fascits pavilions seeming ready to crush the movie's characters as the end appears.Blum is seen making a speech among a forest of risen fists.

The relativity of life and that of free-will is the real subject. Is Fiodor pulling the strings or is he just just one of the puppets lost in the dubious cauldron of the Germano-Soviet pact of 1939 brewing in the shadows? Extraordinary work of a mature genius that makes one think that freedom is just appearance. Great actors with the beauty of french spoken rolling the Rs (Fiodor) or whispering them (his wife). Tragic unexpected ending. Rohmer revisits Hitchkok for a final "Coup de Theatre"!

Deeply intimate portrait of a spy and his wife

[oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx · 9/10 · 8 October 2009]

This seems like unusual territory for Rohmer, and yet it is still very much Rohmerian and a very effective film for me.

Triple Agent concerns one Fyodor Alexandrovich Voronin and his wife Arsinoe (a Greek). At the age of 22 he was a general in the White Russian army (the Tsarist counter-revolutionaries). However he is now living in exile in Paris, the deputy of a White Russian Military Organisation of dubious relevance.

For the most part, the first half of the film is concerned with Arsinoe, we see events through her eyes. She lives in an apartment close to two communist schoolteachers. She paints with some success and discusses politics with them in a naive manner. Voronin is an elusive milky-eyed man who lives a life of extreme duplicity. He is urbane and tender towards Arsinoe with whom however he does not share much in terms of his work.

We never witness events, the film is like a play, we only see conversations. The film is elegiac perhaps. An elegy for Arsinoe and Voronin. Voronin but for the revolution would have been Field Marshal of Russia, but instead becomes a minor though brilliant agent, a pawn on a global chessboard.

I find it hard to express exactly why but I felt ravished by Rohmer in the first half of the film, perhaps because the viewpoint is all Arsinoe, who is very open and vulnerable, and I identified with her. Later in the film Voronin is seen without his wife, and the feeling of mystery is uncloaked to some extent, but we feel as if Voronin is not just a triple agent, he is profoundly introverted, and he has the feeling of something amputated and searching once again for the main body.

The film is tragic, however it is not a melodrama. I think it's one of the most satisfying films I've seen from Eric Rohmer. I don't think it has a very good reputation, that may be because the ending is quite abrupt. I think this allowed the characters to maintain their modesty and dignity and was a graceful gesture from the director in my opinion. I think many people who went to see this won't have been Rohmer fans, and may have been expecting something a little more action packed. What it is, is a lot more, but maybe it missed expectations.