Jean Dujardin wears an Omega Speedmaster

Octave Parango hates advertising and is very good at it, which is the source of most of his problems. Jean Dujardin plays the cynical, cocaine-fueled creative director at the Ross and Witchcraft agency in Jan Kounen's 2007 adaptation of Frédéric Beigbeder's novel 99 Francs. The plot follows Octave's assignment to create a campaign for a new yogurt brand, but the real subject is the corrosion that happens when someone talented spends their ability on things they despise. Jocelyn Quivrin and Vahina Giocante co-star in a film that treats the Parisian advertising world as a circle of hell with better furniture.

Octave wears an Omega Speedmaster, and the irony is hard to miss. Omega is one of the most heavily advertised luxury watch brands on earth, with placement deals spanning James Bond, NASA, and the Olympics. Putting a Speedmaster on a character who considers advertising to be a machine for manufacturing desire is either a deliberate joke or an accident that works as one. The Speedmaster was first introduced in 1957 as a racing chronograph and became the Moonwatch after NASA selected it for all manned space missions in 1965. Its reputation was built on genuine achievement before marketing took over the narrative.

Octave is the kind of man who would know all of this and wear the watch anyway. That's the character in a sentence. He sees through everything, benefits from the system he criticizes, and wears the evidence on his wrist. Kounen shoots the film with enough visual energy to keep it from becoming a lecture, and Dujardin's charisma makes Octave watchable even when he's being terrible.