Je ne suis pas un escroc.

September 9, 2014 7:48 AM

There are countless films and TV shows (often but not always period pieces) that are set in France/Germany/Russia/Japan/etc but which feature an Anglophone cast, speaking English (with the occasional "bonjour" or whatever), playing French/German/Russian/Japanese/etc characters. What are some examples of the reverse? That is, non-English productions set in the US or UK, with e.g. French actors playing Richard Nixon or Queen Elizabeth?
posted by theodolite to Grab Bag (9 answers total)

It is routine in anime for American politicians and military personnel to speak fluent Japanese. See, for instance, Gasaraki.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 8:00 AM on September 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

Another example: Walkure Romanze is placed in Europe. (It's about an academy that teaches knights how to fight in armor, on horse-back.) But everyone speaks Japanese. (And they all have Japanese names.)
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 8:07 AM on September 9, 2014

Soviet Sherlock Holmes from the 1970s and 1980s!
posted by The Giant Rat of Sumatra at 8:07 AM on September 9, 2014

o.k. is a German-language film about US soldiers in the Vietnam War. It's based on the same true story as Casualties of War.
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:26 AM on September 9, 2014

Chocolate Pickle : It's generally routine for EVERYONE in anime and Japanese TV drama shows to speak Japanese.
posted by LoonyLovegood at 8:50 AM on September 9, 2014

There's over a hundred adaptations of Rosamunde Pilcher novels produced by German TV, featuring German actors playing Englishpeople doing their thing in Cornwall.
posted by themel at 11:06 AM on September 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

Romy Schneider played Queen Victoria in Mädchenjahre einer Königin, an Austrian film.
posted by low_horrible_immoral at 3:49 AM on September 10, 2014

The many West German Edgar Wallace krimis are all set in England, featuring English characters played by German actors. They are quite something.
posted by daisyk at 12:56 PM on September 10, 2014

Les soeurs Brontë, from 1979 - I saw it while channel-flipping through some international channels, and I was delightfully shocked at the Brontë sisters eloquently agonizing in French.

Another kind-of example is Más sabe el diablo, a telenovela that, even though it was an American production and features a Mexican lead, takes place in a New York City where everyone speaks in Spanish. Also found through channel-flipping, I thought that maybe everyone in the telenovela's world was just Mexican-American until a black tech guy showed up and nerdily spoke fluent French. If you have time, you can watch all of it here.

I'm also really interested in (what I perceive to be) this reversal of power to document and the power to be the norm. I wonder if, like how American period films used to have everyone speak in British, there's a particular "dialect" that other languages use to depict the past.
posted by facehugger at 4:37 PM on September 20, 2014