10 Quintessential French Spy Movies for the Connoisseur

French spy movies like Dossier 51 and OSS 117: Cairo Next of Spies, among others, are a must-watch for any genre fan.

For years, foreign spy movies have remained underrated, despite having some of the most intriguing plots. Language is a factor, but the main reason is arguably Hollywood’s financial potency. American espionage films get marketed much better and since they take all the headlines, it’s always hard for genre fans to learn about what’s on offer in Europe.

For the connoisseur that is specifically looking for French productions, the following films are recommendable. Like the Hollywood hits, these offerings feature suave and sly agents that are never afraid to put their lives on their line. A few cover true stories while others are entirely fictional. But no matter which side of the reality scale they fall, they are all incredibly entertaining.

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies might have a case for consideration as one the greatest spy comedies, but it isn’t a mere spoof. It blends the intrigue of the Sean Connery Bond movies with the absurdity of the Austin Powers installments to create something that is equally funny and riveting. The film stars the Oscar-winner, Jean Edmond Dujardin (best known for his work on The Artist), as an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) agent that heads to Cairo to look for a missing colleague.

Bond fans are likely to enjoy OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies more because it incorporates the usual ingredients such as spy girls and clever one-liners. Like Bond, the movie’s protagonist, Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath also originates from books. The character was introduced in 1949 way before Ian Fleming wrote the Bond novels and went on to appear in over 50 literary works.

In The Patriots, the protagonist, Attal, finds himself battling a personal conflict involving personal identity and patriotism. Part of him is glad to be a French Jew, but another part of him values his ancestry so much that he volunteers to become a member of Israel’s feared spy agency, The Mossad. Upon signing up, he gets assigned to the toughest section known as Unit 238. And upon completion of his tutelage, he is sent back to France to recruit assets.

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The Patriots might be a slow burn, but it does several things better than other spy movies. For example, it takes audiences through the training processes, something that only military movies ever care to explore. Like the FX series The Americans, it also has better agent-civilian manipulation scenes. Together with his colleagues, Attal is able to fool several people and influence them into doing things they normally wouldn’t. And the fact that he gets plagued by remorse from time to time makes the stories all the more interesting.

Even in the most realistic spy movies, surveillance, and data collection tends to be glossed over in favor of the action and dialogue. Thankfully, there is a movie that dedicates its entire running time to digging up information on a subject. Dossier 51 follows an unnamed French spy agency as it excavates all kinds of dirt on a diplomat and when he is finally presented with the damaging information, he commits suicide.

By watching Dossier 51, one gets to see just how blurred the line between spying and invasion of privacy is. Here, the agency emerges as the real villain, even though its intentions are pure. Many of the target's personal details get used by the ruthless agents in order to manipulate him into cooperating, but this only makes him depressed and despondent rather than obedient. Eventually, he gives up on life.

Despite their best intentions, life is always unfair to turncoats in spy movies and in Farewell, the KGB agent, Sergei Grigoriev’s case is no different. Disillusioned with the Soviet Union’s activities, he decides to pass information to the French government. The files involve lists of all spies that are working in the science-related departments of Western governments. The main character is based on Vladimir Ippolitovich Vetrov — a real-life Russian operative that also provided information to France and NATO at the height of the Cold War.

Sergei’s woes begin when the French agency sends a rookie engineer to be his handle. It’s a deliberate move meant to prevent the KGB from being suspicious, but it frustrates the agent. As expected, things don’t go to plan, and he is eventually punished by his own government. His wife pleads for the West to save him, but the CIA director deliberately refuses. Sergei is then executed by a marksman.

Triple Agent is as much a World War II movie as it is an espionage drama. Events revolve around Fyodor, a general who fled Russia because of Stalin’s retrogressive policies and is now living in Paris with his wife. His life remains a mystery, even to his wife, but it’s soon revealed that he is a triple agent for Marxist, communist, and fascist empires. The task eventually overwhelms him, destroying his life and family,

The film mainly excels by keeping Foydor’s motivation a secret for most of its running time. Since he makes plenty of complicated life choices, it remains hard to figure out what’s driving him and this only becomes clear in the end. Additionally, it’s heavy on dialogue, allowing audiences to learn plenty of little details about the things that lead to the emergence of powerful dictators such as Francisco Franco and Mussolini.

Arnaud Desplechin’s The Sentinel is arguably the cleverest of French spy films. In it, a student named Mathias Barillet heads to France from Germany in order to join a medical school, but strange things end up happening along the journey. First, he gets intimidated and interrogated by a sinister-looking agent, then when he arrives, he realizes there is a human head inside his luggage.

The fear of being labeled a murderer and the desire to find out whose head it is thus drives the rest of the plot. Since he has some knowledge about surgery and forensics, Mathias spends his days dissecting the head inside a lab, and in the process, he makes shocking discoveries about the Cold War games between the Soviet Union and the French government. It’s a refreshing movie because the central protagonist isn’t a spy but an average Joe that gets caught up in something he never signed up for.

Before Jean Reno and Christian Clavier starred together in one of the most revered foreign time travel movies, The Visitors, they were in the critically acclaimed spy thriller Operation Corned-Beef. The film uses comedy and soap opera elements to tell a story about an attempt to capture an arms dealer. In order to hear his conversations, French intelligence puts a listening device on one of his associate’s engagement rings, but things become complicated when she chooses to go on leave to celebrate her wedding anniversary.

Since intelligence agents never play fair, they chose to sabotage the woman’s marriage so that she can get back to work. However, the person they send to tempt her husband turns out to be the fiancé of one of their own agents. Moral dilemmas, therefore, end up clashing with government objectives. Many other twists and turns stem from this discovery, making the film a wildly enjoyable 105-minute ride.

Office politics ail most organizations and spy movies also touch on it from time to time. Yves Robert’s The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe covers this ground much more satisfactorily through its main character, Bernard Milan, who happens to be the second-in-command of France's major intelligence department. Not satisfied with his own high position, he makes plans to discredit his boss so that he can take over.

Generally, The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe is a distinctive spy flick because both the villain and protagonist are all under one roof. There is no foreign enemy to take down, just two equally capable agents trying to outdo each other. Watching them counter each other’s moves is mind-blowing, and so is hearing them curse out and make new plans whenever each realizes what the other has been up to.

Work and pleasure mix once again in Möbius. It follows the Russian FSB agent, Gregory Lyubov, who is on a mission to monitor an oligarch’s activities in Monaco. The spy thriller tries to be as realistic as possible by refraining from piling every single task on Lyubov. Sent in to help him is a female agent named Alice, whose job is mostly to analyze the tycoon’s finances.

Things get juicy when Lyubov begins suspecting Alice of working with the enemy and as the proactive person that he is, he contacts her just to be sure. Interestingly, his quest to find out the truth turns into a full-blown obsession, and an affair soon develops between the two. From there, Möbius becomes rather predictable, with many things getting jeopardized because of personal feelings. Even so, the love storyline makes the film better because it humanizes characters that initially seemed too tough.

Luc Benson’s La Femme Nikita has been remade five times (three movies and two TV shows), yet the original remains the most intriguing of them all. The film uses a standard spy movie formula where the teen junkie, Nikita gets recruited by the DGSE’s secret division known as The Centre to be a sleeper agent and contract killer. The move is made secretly after she gets convicted of murdering several police officers during a robbery.

Compared to Hollywood spy movies, La Femme Nikita is more like James Bond and Mission Impossible since it’s heavy on action and stunts. These are executed beautifully and convincingly, despite the flick having a smaller budget. Additionally, the head of the organization happens to be corrupt and condescending, leaving Nikita with no option but to try and clean things up.

Philip Etemesi is an author, screenwriter, and film critic. As a child, he was notorious for watching mature movies like Goodfellas and North By Northwest instead of Home Alone and Kindergarten Cop. His ex-girlfriend once asked him to choose between her and the TV. You can bet what he chose. A wildlife lover, Philip once saved for months to buy an orphaned giraffe named Refu. He then let her stay with her own kind at the sanctuary, but he always visits every weekend and sends the animal version of child support. Cool dude!