WASP NETWORK: Assayas’ Spy Thriller Bites Off More Than It Can Chew

French auteur Olivier Assayas returned to TIFF one year after his box-office flop Non-Fiction with Cuban spy thriller Wasp Network: a  seductive yet altogether dazed drama starring a roster of Latin cinema’s greatest. Wasp Network stars Penélope Cruz, Edgar Ramírez and Gael García Bernal, whose performances alone make the trip to the theatre worth it in this mixed-bag political drama.

The film attempts to adapt Fernando Morais‘ non-fiction book, The Last Soldiers of the Cold War: The Story of the Cuban Five, but this sprawling document proves too historically rich to tackle in a multi-character-focused dramedy. It’s impossibly dizzy keeping up with the tangled webs Assayas weaves, without a worry that audiences understand the messy political scandal he wants us so desperately to care about.

Keeping up with the characters flittering on and off of the screen in Wasp Network becomes a challenging task when Assayas chooses to focus on all five main players in the scandal – and then some. Still sporting Assayas‘ signature flair, what stands out in Wasp Network are its glossy visuals and and a surprisingly wry screenplay, considering the seriousness it places on political accuracy.

Politically Scattered

Wasp Network increasingly falters politically – throughout its runtime, the scattered, loosely overlapping plot lines of each character make little sense to any viewer that isn’t a historian on the final years of the Castro regime. Assayas aims to construct an erudite plot that demands full attention from his viewers, and while we work at piecing it all together, ultimately, his loose threads lead nowhere. Each of the myriad of characters walk around as shells, empty archetypical cartoons of their real life counterparts. And while watching its attractive protagonists flounder around alongside show-offy jump-cuts, pretty visuals and peppy montages, the overall message it leaves behind is empty.

After early reactions from a Venice Film Festival Screening, Assayas announced he would go back and re-splice the entire film, taking out unclear sequences and adding further historical context where it was lacking. This tells us even the visionary director himself wasn’t satisfied with the outcome of his ambitious undertaking.

Wasp Network: Conclusion

Wasp Network‘s bites off far more than it can chew, there’s no denying this all-star cast makes up for what is lost in plot. Cruz, demonstrating her mastery of a Cuban drawl, and Ana de Armas (Also at the festival for Knives Out) carry the film at its weakest ends. Altogether, Wasp Network makes for a deliciously dizzying good time at the cinema, but never fails to remind us it’s an attractive film about attractive people.

Wasp Network is a film that, like its pretty protagonists, fails to draw the line on where its alliances lie beyond the flashy Rolex watches and thousand-dollar suits that come along with the spy lifestyle.

Wasp Network does not currently have a release date.