‘Monsieur Spade’ Reinvigorates the Hard-Boiled Detective Trope with Brooding Nostalgia
Clive Owen’s hardened masculine charm is put to good use as a burnout, retired PI in the South of France
Contemporary pop culture doesn’t grant much space to hard-boiled noirs and their singular heroes these days. The quick-witted, chain-smoking, loner detective in a rugged hat spitting funny and insulting one-liners while trying to solve a murder has little appeal to younger audiences, I guess. Characters like Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe are products of the past — wearing old-fashionness proudly on their sleeve — refusing to move with the times and sticking to a worldview that does little favor to them. Hence the unusual collaboration of Scott Frank (creator of The Queen’s Gambit) and Tom Fontana (creator of Oz) in AMC’s latest neo-noir miniseries, Monsieur Spade, comes as a surprise (a damn good one at that) in this day and age. And an even bigger one is that it works like a charm.
Evidently, Frank and Fontana know the genre’s conventions well enough to put a spin on them that revitalizes old tropes to breathe new life into a character that’s almost a hundred years old. In their vision, Sam Spade (Clive Owen) — Dashiell Hammett’s highly influential protagonist in The Maltese Falcon — is a rather different character than the one we know from the source material. But that’s a good thing. Owen’s Spade is brooding and resigned, aching from a life that did a higher number on him than he'd anticipated, rapidly losing the few pleasures he had left for his sunset days to enjoy.
In his 60s, he’s an expat living in the small town of Bozouls in the South of France, vaguely remembering a life in San Francisco that seems so far gone now it might as well have been a dream. He came here to finish a job in 1955 (delivering a young child to her father), fell in love with a classy woman and the warm idyll of this place, and never left. But eight years have gone by, taking his beloved wife Gabrielle (Chiara Mastroianni) with them, who only left behind a dreamy vineyard chock-full of bittersweet memories the American finds himself lost in more often than he’d like. As we know, love hurts, but longing for a past that only gets further away from our grasp is worse. Spade is painfully aware that besides his grumpy housemaid, nostalgia is pretty much the only thing that hasn’t left him yet. At this point, though, he made peace with his fate.
So when his doctor tells him that he’s got emphysema — along with two options: quit smoking or die — it doesn’t faze him much. It’s almost as if he knew that death would come knocking rather sooner than later. What does surprise him, though, is the vicious murder of several local nuns (one of whom he had a lovely rapport with), which he decides to investigate alongside the town’s police. And while doing so, he stumbles upon intriguing secrets connected to his late wife, her ex-husband, and the girl he brought home all those years ago. But in the process of all this, the most surprising discovery he finds is within himself — that he actually cares about this place and its people more than he thought.
As in the best hard-boiled detective novels, the murder case in Monsieur Spade is a web full of intricacies and ulterior motives, connecting a wide array of people with personal agendas who all end up in Bozouls for one reason or another. It’s a sprawling and complex mystery that will require sharp attention from the viewer to untangle or even follow, but that’s the least appealing (although it is gripping) aspect of the series.
What Frank and Fontana do even more magnificently here is romanticize an era through a microcosm and let it glaze over the characters. Rose-tinted nostalgia pours from everywhere: the lush countryside glows with vivid colors oozing tranquillity, flawless vintage cars brim with style, and the bittersweet smell of Gauloises permeates every room, terrace, and poolside the camera takes you to. Though it’s all juxtaposed by cruelty, kidnapping, and murder on occasion, it’s an illusion of a period and a world that can only exist in fiction. Yet it feels so alluringly real you want to touch it, move into its vibe, and never leave.
Then you add the razor-sharp dialogue that pops with rhythm and elegance (delivered in French and English, mon ami), spoken by stupendously well-dressed and immaculate people who were created to impress and amuse. I can’t overstate how masterfully written Monsieur Spade is, a symphony of wit, humor, and confidence, not afraid to use the local language in equal measure despite being an American production. Of course, none of it would work as effectively as it does without Clive Owen’s undying charisma. Even at the end of his fifties, the actor carries that prestigious leading man energy that made him a force to be reckoned with on both screens as a staple of ice-cold masculinity — which, sadly, he gets less and less chance to show off (see how A Murder At the End of the World wasted it almost entirely).
Though his version of Spade is softer (he doesn’t carry a gun and wins most of his conflicts with sheer arrogance), Owen’s overbearing physical presence still intimidates and removes any doubt of whether he could be a threat or not. It’s hard to imagine anyone doing a better job here than him — though hardcore Hammett fans might have a problem believing he can fill the shoes of Humphrey Bogart — delivering a stellar performance, which is another proof of how fantastic he could’ve been as James Bond about 10-15 years ago (he turned down the role multiple times).
Considering all that, I'm somewhat puzzled by the disinterest and little buzz this show gets, given it's been streaming for nearly five weeks now. An original story with top-notch writing, directing, and acting wrapped in romanticized nostalgia in a virtually extinct genre rarely feels this fresh and vibrant, thus it should be celebrated — so is excellent television, which is what Monsieur Spade is from top to bottom.
In the last few weeks, I reviewed the Season 3 premiere of Abbott Elementary, praised Paramount+’s gripping serial killer thriller, A Bloody Lucky Day, and wrote about the gruesome yet intriguing details that didn’t make it into Netflix’s Griselda miniseries about the infamous drug lord Griselda Blanco. Next week, I will come with an opinion piece about True Detective: Night Country.
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