“Borat 2”: how Rudy Giuliani was created

We have to spoil, that can’t be helped if you write about the excitement the second feature film caused about Kazakh reporter Borat (played by Sacha Baron Cohen) before it was seen on the Amazon Prime Video streaming service on Friday. is.

Because all the excitement is about a scene with Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani near the end of the movie. And to be able to evaluate this scene correctly, you have to know a little about “Borat: Follow-up Movie”. Especially since the excitement for Giuliani also influences the question of whether the film is a success or not.

Sacha Baron Cohen deliberately put the release of “Borat 2” before the presidential election. On the one hand, because many scenes are in the context of the electoral campaign; in the event that Trump is eliminated, they would even become obsolete. On the other hand, because Cohen’s method of humor always aims at political enlightenment: the confrontation of real people with blatantly exaggerated fictional characters to illustrate the crudeness of reality. For the last viewer to really notice, the political message in this film is made very explicit again at the end, with two plaques as an election call: “NOW VOTE” is on the first, then: “OR YOU WILL BE EXECUTED” (sic!). Go vote. Otherwise it will execute (sic!).

Giuliani and the wrong 15 year old

Basically, the point is that Borat, who with great zeal has tarnished Kazakhstan’s reputation in the world, should present a gift to the top management of the United States as reparation: his daughter Tutar. She is 15 years old, lives in a cage according to Kazakh customs and admires Melania Trump; after all, he lives in a golden cage. Tutar is played by 24-year-old Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova.

To prepare Tutar for this national task, she is trained according to the supposed taste of the men around the Pussygrabber president (“They like it when women seem weak,” explains an influencer) and prepares, in the study of tanning and in the beauty clinic.

After some deliberation and detours, the choice falls to Trump’s confidant Giuliani as the recipient of the “gift.” But because it is not so easy to meet such a busy man, Tutar poses as a reporter for the fictional right-wing alternative outlet “Patriots Report” and sets up an interview with Giuliani.

The interview takes place in the living room of a hotel suite. A fake reporter, also a minor in the film’s narration, emphasizes how nervous she is: in the classic spy novel, you would be one. honey trap talk about a trap for Rudy Giuliani. At first Grandpa reacts quite a bit to Tutar’s compliments. But soon the hand goes to her buttocks, she pats him on the knee briefly.

Then a cut, in the next scene they are both standing, and Tutar says, “Should we have a drink in the bedroom?” There Giuliani helps her remove the microphone, sits on the bed and asks for her number and address. Then he strokes her lower back as she fiddles with his microwire. Then another cut, she has the microphone in her hand as Giuliani’s hand goes into her pants. Suddenly, Cohen walks into the room like Borat, in lingerie, and yells, “He’s 15, he’s too old for you.” A security guard arrives, Giuliani leaves the suite, Borat and Tutar flee together.

Of course, the 76-year-old politician Giuliani could not have known that the alleged reporter was supposed to be a minor. But by 2020, one might think that one should understand what is and what is not professional behavior. This episode tends to fall into the latter category.

Giuliani sees it differently. He defended himself on Twitter, saying he had just tucked his shirt into his pants. Neither before, during nor after the interview did he behave in an inappropriate manner.

But at least comedian Stephen Colbert disagrees: he, Colbert, takes off his mic every night and has never laid in a king-size bed, he told the “Daily Beast” website.

Illuminate through exposure

When it comes to playful handling of fiction and reality, the reactions show that Sacha Baron Cohen is up to date, at least on the level of #Varoufake. In the run-up to that, one couldn’t be completely sure that his television series “Who Is America?” he had been criticized, among other things, for the increasingly unlikely costumes.

Now there is a plausible explanation for this in the new movie: Borat is recognized on the street, people want to kiss him and give him a high five; in this way, there are no authentic reactions from the interlocutors. So Cohen, disguised as Borat, has to continue disguising himself. If you like to disguise humor, you will laugh out loud at times, for example when Borat goes to the Republican event in a Ku Klux Klan hood. By the way, boos wearing Trump masks are not well received there.

Cohen has been mixing these rather awkward parts with embarrassing conversations since the days of Ali-G. The movie has some important moments here, especially when it comes to the role of women in parts of American society: An anti-abortion opponent is driven to the brink of insanity because he has to assume that father and daughter are happily chatting about an incest baby. There are more nuances to a Republican women’s group event than Tutar proudly recounts about his first masturbation.

The framework plot, however, does have some aspects of déjà vu and connects the single-player strikes quite tenaciously. Kazakhstan as a symbol of social underdevelopment is overblown, even if it is still suited to some nice allusions to troll farms.