Bon Voyage
Directed by Jean-Paul Rappeneau.
This French adventure comedy, set during the German invasion in 1940, rollicks from one scene to the next, one character to the next, barely stopping for a breath. It’s one of the most purely entertaining films in quite a while.
Viviane (Isabelle Adjani) is a famous actress, and she sure as hell knows it, but her career is in potential turmoil if the truth about a murder she committed is revealed. Frédéric (Grégori Derangère) helps her clean up the mess, but unwittingly takes the fall for her and is imprisoned, only to escape with Raoul (Yvan Attal) as the Germans sweep across northern France. They end up in Bordeaux, on the run from the invasion and the police, and get mixed up with politician Beaufort (Gérard Depardieu) and a physicist and his assistant, Camille (Virginie Ledoyen), who are transporting precious heavy water. Winckler (Peter Coyote) is there too somewhere, on the trail of Viviane. There are a lot of characters, but we somehow keep track of them all as they bump into each other in unexpected ways.
The film is a kind of spoof of Casablanca, or maybe that’s just my one track mind. Maybe everyone was interested in exit visas, had coffee at French cafés when the Germans were marching in and had to decide who was getting on that plane (or boat, in this case), or maybe they just always do in the movies. Rappeneau and his cast obviously had fun creating this affectionate homage to the 40s — and 40s movies — with composer Gabriel Yared channelling Max Steiner in an attempt to seemingly drive every scene with Viviane into melodramatic excess.
It also looks fantastic, with beautiful sets and great costumes. It should be a lesson to Hollywood of how to use your budget wisely (it is one of the most expensive movies ever made in France). Sure, the plot is pretty straightforward, and the direction classical, but the cast is wonderful and it’s so funny, romantic and adventurous that you really don’t mind. And there are Nazis. What more could you ask?
***1/2 (out of four)
Joshua Blackman
