Showtimes & Tickets Enter Zip Code:

THE VALET
Written & Directed by: Francis Veber,
Produced by: Patrice Ledoux.
Director of Photography: Robert Fraisse.
Edited by: Georges Klotz.
Released by: Sony Pictures Classics.
Language: French with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: France. 85 min. Rated: PG-13.
With: Gad Elmaleh, Alice Taglioni, Daniel Auteuil, Kristin Scott Thomas, Richard Berry, Virginie Ledoyen & Dany Boon.

Pierre Levasseur (Daniel Auteuil) is a billionaire tycoon with a beautiful supermodel girlfriend, Elena (Alice Taglioni), whose face blankets Parisian billboards, but he also has a wife, Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas), who has 60 percent of the shares in his company.

This is where the valet comes in. Although Pierre and Elena have been as discrete as possible to avoid public scrutiny – which would lead to divorce and corporate retaliation from Christine – the snooping paparazzi catch the couple in a brief sidewalk spat where François Pignon (Gad Elmaleh), a valet for a swank restaurant, walks unbeknownst among the two. The resulting photos appear on the covers of the next day’s tabloids.

To save his position in the company, and thus his marriage, Pierre enlists François to live with Elena for a month to assuage his wife’s suspicions. But Christine is convinced she’s being betrayed and sets private investigators on François and Elena’s trail to watch them night and day to find undeniable proof of her husband’s dalliances. Pierre, jealous and insecure, hires his own sleuths to make sure François and Elena aren’t forming their own romance while they’re under the same roof.

Prolific comedy writer/director Francis Veber (2001’s The Closet) adds one more diversion to his lighthearted romantic entanglements. His script relies on pratfalls, predictable predicaments, and Alice Taglioni’s beauty, making for a breezy romantic comedy where the protagonists leave jubilant, the villain gets punched, and the wronged are vindicated.

But there’s something else that makes The Valet stand apart from the usual romantic comedy fare in America, which can be delineated into the male oriented (sex crazed) and the female oriented (softly-lit love scenes). And it’s clear here, too, that everyone wants to have sex with Elena, including subconsciously François, who actually fondles her breasts while he's asleep and they're sharing the same bed. But even though he’s our heroic protagonist who’s in love with another woman, the audience won’t mind his fondling since Elena doesn’t mind. In Veber’s films, it’s just sex. If this film were remade in America, François, played by Jason Biggs, would be nervously spying on Elena while she’s in the shower, and Elena would either respond by shrieking or coquettishly encouraging the attention. The comedy here is in Pierre’s jealous behavior, not pie jokes. The romance is muted and flippantly silly, not filled with self-serious walks along the beach.

Though in the end, it’s all about casting. Gad Elmaleh could play Inspector Clouseau for all his bumbling and awkward moments. Alice Taglioni goes from scene to scene with an amused semi-smile on her face, as if it’s not just her looks that separate her from most of humanity, but her effervescent, irrepressible spirit. Taglioni makes her role of a potential home wrecker seem positively angelic, while Daniel Auteuil’s turn as a neurotic villain is pitch perfect. And do I even need to say that a smirking Kristin Scott Thomas was made to play a wealthy cuckolded wife, who loves nothing more in the morning than a good machination? Zachary Jones
April 20, 2007