Bon voyage (2003)
Directed by Jean-Paul Rappeneau

Film Review

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.

Film Synopsis

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...