Bon voyage (2003) - film review

Paris, 1940.  A few days before France falls to German occupation, a famous actress, Viviane Denvers, triggers a series of events that will irrevocably change the lives of herself and those around her.  When she accidentally kills an unwelcome suitor, she appeals to a former boyfriend, Frédéric Auger, to help her.  Whilst trying to dispose of the body, Frédéric is arrested and finds himself in prison, where he strikes up a friendship with a crook named Raoul.  The two men manage to escape in the chaos which accompanies the arrival of the German troops.  They head for the town of Bordeaux in the Free Zone where, coincidentally, Viviane is being propositioned by a government official, Beaufort.  Frédéric then becomes embroiled in a scheme to smuggle a Jewish scientist out of the country...

This eagerly awaited seventh film from acclaimed director Jean-Paul Rappeneau certainly lived up to expectations from the point of view of its sense of spectacle and production quality.  Beautifully filmed, with a keen eye to period detail, not to mention a star-studded cast, Bon voyage would seem to have a lot going for it – but look a little closer and it is easy to see that it doesn’t compare well with some of Rappeneau’s earlier films.  It is in fact something of a mess.

The film has two main problems.  Firstly, it attempts to span too many genres – it tries to be a black comedy, yet it’s also a war-time drama; it is a romantic melodrama, but it is also a thriller; and it’s also a parody of each of the above..  Whilst combining different genres is not in itself a bad thing, it can be confusing for the spectator if it is carried too excess and for no apparent reason, particularly when the plot is also overly complicated.  And the plot’s complexity is where the film really does fall down.

Bon voyage has so many plot strands that not only does the film feel muddled, hurried and confused from start to finish, it also feels painfully contrived.  This naturally creates a headache for the spectator, who has a real struggle trying to keep up with the film’s haphazard rambling and criss-crossing from one storyline to another, but it also robs the film of any real depth and emotional intensity.   You would hardly think this was the work of the same  director who gave us the magnificent Cyrano de Bergerac in 1990.

Although there is certainly a lot of acting talent in the cast, very little of this actually comes through on screen.  The only two actors who come close to giving a credible performance are Yvan Attal and Virginie Ledoyen, but they are both badly underused.  Those actors who get most of the screen time (Depardieu, Adjani, Derangère) seem to have some difficulty taking the film seriously, as can easily be discerned from some painfully unsubtle acting.

For all its faults, Bon voyage has just about has what it takes to be mildly entertaining.  It may be a little on the long side, but some of the comedy works rather well (particularly the tongue-in-cheek parody).  There is enough energy to keep the narrative moving and hold our attention – even if it is all rather a somewhat shallow and confusing experience.

© James Travers 2005


Remember when Hollywood was churning out movies like Casablanca, Mildred Pierce, etc. at the rate of one a week?  Movies that were defined by several main roles plus another half dozen supporting roles and a new subplot every reel.  I'm ready to bet the farm that Jean-Paul Rappeneau saw those movies and loved them so much he decided to replicate them.  This is refreshing in the 21st century when we are usually down to two leads, and a total cast of about five chasing one feeble story line.  Here is a run-through of the main roles in Bon voyage: two female: Isabelle Adjani and Virginie Ledoyen, plus four male: Gregori Derangère, Gérard Depardieu, Yvan Attal and Peter Coyote.  What does Rappeneau give them to do?   Stand back and let me lay the plot on you...

We begin masterfully in what we think at first is a theatre.  We focus on the Royal Circle, where Isabelle Adjani is seated front centre as the black tie audience react to what is happening on stage.  Slowly we realise that this is in fact a Movie Theatre (most probably the Normandie or Marivaux, as these were where films were premiered at the time) and Adjani is constantly switching focus from herself on screen to a nasty piece of work in the stalls who is ogling her like a wolf eyeing a lamb chop.  Soon the film ends to rapturous applause and main character No. 1 (Adjani as Viviane Denvers) is joined by main character No. 2 (Gérard Depardieu as government minister Jean-Etienne Beaufort) who introduces himself and tells her to call him.  

After a post-première party, a group of friends drop Adjani at her well-appointed apartment building where the angry admirer is not only waiting but forces his way into her flat.  It seems he invested money in her career and is looking for payment in kind. Adjani is made of sterner stuff and within minutes the guy is as stiff as a Laurence Harvey performance.  Thinking on her feet, she calls main character No. 3, Frédéric Auger (Gregori Derangère), who used to be the boy next door and has come to Paris to write his novel.  Turning on the charm she persuades him to come around despite the lateness of the hour. Thinking they are merely going to rekindle old desires, he agrees, only to be confronted with a guy who's deader than Vaudeville.  Naturally he wants no part of it but Adjani has a nice line in persuaders and he is soon driving away with the body.  Alas, within the hour he is under arrest, tried and convicted.  In the slammer he meets main character No. 4 (Yvan Attal as Raoul, a career criminal).  

When the Germans arrive in Paris the prison is evacuated and Frédéric is handcuffed to the streetwise Raoul, who soon has them both on a train to Bordeaux, along with the French Government.  On the train, they meet main character No. 5: Virginie Ledoyen as Camille, secretary to professor Kopolski, who has some heavy water that must not fall into German hands.  In Bordeaux the plot thickens, Viviane shacks up with Beaufort whilst trying to elude Frédéric, and soon main character No. 6 appears, in the shape of Peter Coyote, as Alex Winckler, ostensibly a journalist but really a Nazi agent.  It just keeps getting better and better...  What we need is more movies like this and Rappeneau was robbed at César time.  A positive gem.

© Leon Nock (London, England) 2010 

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