The Nazi occupation of France would seem like a strange setting for an adventurous comedy but think about how much irony courage and even humor found a way in “Casablanca” during a very similar context in history. Not that “Bon Voyage” is “Casablanca” but it proceeds with the same cynicism and combines the worlds of politics and science with the movies. In addition, it offers Isabelle Adjani one of the best parts of her life, that of a superstar who is willing to do everything including talking and sleeping with anyone with the end goal of saving her life and furthering her career.
The movie is a lavish, expensive period production by Jean-Paul Rappeneau who also directed Gerard Depardieu’s “Cyrano de Bergerac” in 1990 and the great “The Horseman on the Roof” in 1995. Now Gerad is back in “Bon Voyage” and he is not an unmade bed anymore, he is incredibly well dressed. His astonishing weight loss and slicked back hair has him wearing the tailored suits of a cabinet minister.
The film begins in Paris where the Nazis are already seizing the city and most sophistication citizens are trying to escape to Bordeaux, which they suspect is free from the Nazi curse. Adjani is cast as Viviane Denvers, a celebrated Jain in Indian cinema and perhaps an even more renowned mistress. Now, to claim that she does look more youthful than her 48 years is not flattering but rather the bare minimum. One isn’t surprised to learn that Adjani effortlessly portrayed the character of a teenager in “Camille Claudel” (1990). Her character here works instinctively as a woman who wants men to appeal to her by offering her both safety and money. Her tragic flaw is that she loves men, which is where the problem arises. This complication deepens as she has come to love, desire, and require devotion from a partner all at once in the film which is deceptively hard to obtain. The result being, every single woman is bound to end unfulfilled.
Beaufort sipped away at his drink, speaking only of what he wanted to say. And perhaps he felt someday he could manage that too. His heart was always swarming with strange ideas, but he was always leashed by his mind. An artist can exist even without Paint, but a cabinet minister without ideas is a mere shadow. As he was looking down, his brow was furrowed in deep thought. Depardieu’s portrayal of him was masterful and in the final moments of the movie, when he had lost his family and everything else, he was utterly speechless.
Jean-Etienne Beaufort, a right wing politician, witnessed everything from his father’s hand as he was interrogated in front of all the ministers during the trials. His killers claimed to be serving justice, but in reality, they destroyed the man’s life. Depardieu’s jaw dropped as he witnessed a cabinet minister pleading with fellow politicians to work with the Nazis. Hacks such as him were present in the entourage of diplomats who, in the same manner as Credel, told Michels that national understanding is far more important than any apartment or furniture.
So, now, there is a person whom she can look after, and guess what, there is someone who can look after her as well. And how can we forget Alex Winckler (Peter Coyote), a very powerful journalist, who is under her spell. Is he a dependable person? He has an accent, and those who follow movies will remember that he shares a name with one of the Nazi monsters in ‘The Third Man’. Viviane’s game is to trigger the need for protection, for instance, with a husband of the moment, convince the husband that she loves him above all and then switch when necessary. And how does Adjani construct the character? Not by displaying hyper-feminity, or waving reckless sexuality, but rather by fashioning a sucking kind of need and so drawing men as close as they can go without resisting her deep, large eyes look into them and be drowned.
The action of the film involves a Jewish Kopolski (Jean-Marc Stehle) who possesses heavy nuclear water “bottles”, meant to be kept out of the reach of the Nazis, as well as both emigration and eventual asylum in England. At the start of the film, we are unable to grasp how this will connect to the main stream of events, but later on, we learn exactly how it will come full circle. He constantly fears of the remaining large bottles of the precious water falling onto the wrong hands; the bottles in this instance serve the same purpose as the wine filled earth used in Hitchock’s ‘Notorious.’ During the time, his perpetual MacGuffin is the nuclear water which Prof. Kopolski wishes to destroy. His only assistance lies within a more youthful hand, Camille (Virginie Ledoyen). The requisite for this young girl is also the occasion, she manages to save the professor along with the heavy nuclear water from the Nazis. In anticipation, she stashes them into a station wagon trunk, which offers us to break.
Somewhere there’s a bunch of other people, and quite a few to be exact, which are a group of wealthy nobility and vacationers who seem to appear in every single one of the hotels, asking for what clearly cannot be provided. But at the same time the background setting of the movie is farce with a cross of action and the aid of romance, and Papineau together with his four co-writers are absolute experts at juggling all of their different responsibilities. The lives and the destinies of the characters elaborate and intertwine, the reasons are always changing quite drastically without notice, and Viviane is just like Eliza on ice floes, bounding from one gentleman to the other.
The movie is full of curves, thrills and amusing situations. It uses a rather unique form of humor. Simultaneously, it attempts to drive home some powerful points. While it is spectacular on so many levels, it heavily relies on fiction and cannot be termed as realistic The bereavement and reunion test the creativity of Camille and Viviane, who try to find a balance in between hope and desperation. In the current context, one must appreciate the fallacy on account of men, particularly the powerful ones, being weak before a woman like Viviane. It’s rather cruel of her to enhance the self-person of a narcissist. What is quite astonishing is how deep the root of that narcissism goes.
I haven’t so much as touched on the costumes, the sets or the mood of “Bon Voyage.” I would venture to say that if Rappeneau’s “Horseman on the Roof” is the most expensive French film made to this date, then “Bon Voyage” must be somewhere in that league as well. He does not use the money to create a mammoth, clumsy piece of entertainment, but rather uses it to build a universe that seems to truly exist even at the most remote portions of Paris, Bordeaux, hotels, cabinet meetings, boudoirs, dark roads, and desperate appointments. He is supremely self-assured, confident in the entertainment’s ability, aware of the talents of Adjani, Depardieu, and the rest.
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