I’ll be upfront and say that Dix pour cent / Call My Agent! is one of the most pleasant surprises one can find on Netflix, and even though some might watch it for the so-called chill, others will appreciate it for the fact that it’s a true letter of love dedicated to French cinema and its greatest stars. Call My Agent! is a workplace drama with a lot of swing and a more than compelling twist, showing what happens behind the scenes at an artistic management agency whose clients include stars such as Juliette Binoche, Isabelle Huppert, and even Fabrice Luchini.

Excellently written and sliding seamlessly between comedy and drama, the show has a great advantage that it humanizes and sometimes even pokes fun at the stars, offering playful, semi-fictionalized versions of themselves and exploring the challenges in their careers. For example, in one episode we see the peerless Isabelle Huppert as she is trying to balance shooting two feature films at the same time, and in another, we see Monica Bellucci wishing to pursue a relationship with a “regular” guy, after having dated armies of Hollywood stars and Russian oligarchs who have tried (and failed) to put the entire world at her feet.

The stars may be the cherries on top, but the true heroes of the show are the agents of ASK, an organization that enters a deep crisis when its founder, Samuel (Alain Rimoux), dies after being stung by a wasp. Facing the threat of bankruptcy, Andréa (Camille Cottin), Matthias (Thibault de Montalembert), Gabriel (Grégory Montel) and Arlette (Liliane Rovère) are ready to pull every ace out of their sleeves to stay afloat on the market, entering a frenzied fight to retain their clients and to survive on the basis of their „10%” cuts.

Here lies one of the show’s main attractions, which is its incursion behind the scenes of cinema and its exploration of the indelible relationship between this form of art and its financial aspect. If from a spectator’s point of view, accessing the cinema means paying for a ticket (or, recently, for a subscription to a streaming platform), for agents and actors, money means a gigantic web of fees, commissions, intellectual rights, and royalties. In the eyes of the audience, it might seem that talent and inspiration are the main drives of the industry, but for professionals, the main engine is money, and the protagonists are willing to do anything to keep it running in order to survive one more day in a more-than-competitive industry.

But let us not be fooled by the idea that their only drive is money. Compelled by their love for cinema, they are ready for any sort of sacrifices in order for their clients to snatch the best roles in films helmed by the best directors. Yes, Andréa, Matthias, Gabriel and Arlette do indeed have to lie and manipulate their way around in order to get their stars scot-free out of any crisis, and sometimes they even have to sabotage each-other in their ruthless battle for the yearly cash premiums, but there are as many circumstances in which trust, respect, and mutual collaboration turns them into exemplary characters. If the situation calls for it, these sharks are capable of switching to a human face in the blink of an eye.

The vitality of the script is impressive, as is the way in which the army of screenwriters has managed to create complex and endearing characters. And hats off to Call My Agent!, for its unpredictable way to pass from soap opera-esque artifice (like an incest threat, for example) to relevant discussions about the fragility of an actor (such as Cécile de France contemplating plastic surgery in order to land a role in Tarantino’s new film), or the vulnerability of the magical atmosphere on the film set, where unfettered egos or a lack in communication can sabotage the kind of teamwork that is needed to create a new cinematic masterpiece.

Co-creator Dominique Besnehard spent more than two decades working with iconic stars of French cinema, and swears that most of the shenanigans that take place in the show are real. Of course, one tends not to believe him, since it’s more than likely that the episodic scripts were written after negotiations between the producers and the lawyers of actors such as Isabelle Adjani, Jean Dujardan, and, in the fourth season, Jean Reno and Sigourney Weaver, but that doesn’t make the audience any less willing to let itself seduced by the show, attracted by the chance to take a look at the backstage of these stars’ lives.

Try the first episode out and I bet that you will end up binging the whole thing!

The first three seasons of the show are available on Netflix, and the fourth had its premiere in France at the end of October.

Ștefan Dobroiu

Born in Piteşti, Romania, in 1980, Ştefan is a graduate from the University of Bucharest, with a degree in Journalism and Communication Sciences. After trying his hand with financial journalism and photography (the latter still being very close to his heart), he put his career on a new path in 2006, when he became the senior editor of Cinemagia. He is also the Romania and Bulgaria correspondent for Cineuropa.org. At Films in Frame he recommends monthly the newest film trailers.