‘Les tribulations d’un chinois en Chine‘ (the English title is ‘Up to His Ears’) was made by director Philippe de Broca in 1965, a year after his international blockbuster success with ‘L’homme de Rio’. It is obvious that the film tries to capitalize on that success, casting Jean-Paul Belmondo in the lead role and peering him with Ursula Andress who had gained international fame thanks to her role in ‘Dr. No’. However, the producers chose not to continue with the same hero, which could have meant the beginning of a French series competing with that of the James Bond films, but to take and adapt an idea from a 19th century novel by Jules Verne. The result was a film that, without being a failure, did not reach the same level of success as his predecessor, neither upon release nor in the perspective of the six decades that have passed since then.
The main hero of the film is Arthur Lempereur, he is filthy rich and very bored with his fiancée and life in general. He tries to commit suicide in every possible way and fails every time. His spiritual mentor, Mr. Goh, proposes a pact: Arthur already wants to commit suicide, let him close a one-month life insurance policy with his fiancée and Mr. Goh as beneficiaries and he will hire assassins to professionally and painlessly carry out the task. The story gets complicated when our hero ends up in a strip club where the performer (a tourist who is financing her trip around the world) gives him back his zest for life. The contract placed on his head is impossible to cancel and a chase begins that will take the hero from Hong Kong to Tibet and back, with the entire underworld of Asia on his trail.
I don’t know if Jules Verne was the one who had the original idea, but I’ve seen it adapted into a few films, sometimes in a comic style (like here), sometimes as thriller or horror. There are many differences between Jules Verne’s novel and the story in this film. The hero is not Chinese and the action does not take place in China, which at that time was completely separate from Hong Kong. The script is quite thin and the editing doesn’t really cope with the accelerated pace of the action that takes us by sea, in the air and on land. It took me about half the film to get into the rhythm and enjoy some exceptional comic scenes such as the car and bed on wheels chase, Bebel‘s striptease or the scene in the Chinese theater with the heroes disguised as circus artists. Belmondo and Ursula Andress are at their best in this film and the romance that is said to have developed between the two during filming perhaps amplifies their magnetism. Jean Rochefort plays a youthful role that fits the style he will develop later in his career. Also appearing in the film, as Mr. Goh, is Valéry Inkijinoff, an interesting actor whose biography would make an excellent film script. The special effects are remarkable, considering that at that time computer graphics were not used and that many stunts were performed with great risk. The chain of action scenes is no less dynamic than that of the most recent films in the ‘M.I.’ series. The images of Hong Kong in the years before its spectacular development as a business metropolis have document value. There are quite a few technical problems, but still this film, which starts from a novel written in the 19th century and was made in the 20th century, has the potential to entertain in the 21st century as well.