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By Brooke Holgerson
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Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s film walks a fine line between comedy and drama, as you might expect in a frothy romp about the Nazi invasion of France. It helps that the cast features just about every French actor an American audience is likely to have heard of, including Gérard Depardieu, Virginie Ledoyen, and Isabelle Adjani. Adjani plays a famous actress accustomed to manipulating men to get her way; at the start of the film she coerces an ex into taking a murder rap for her. Her helplessness during the retreat from Paris is contrasted with the selfless heroics of a physics student played by Ledoyen, who’s intent on keeping her Jewish professor and his top-secret invention away from the Nazis. Both women are aided by a young writer (Grégori Derangère, who won a César, the French Oscar, for his performance) who manages to be both winningly idealistic and believably naive. He’s the center around which the other characters revolve, and his charm goes a long way in sustaining the more tiring plot twists — especially his adoration of Adjani’s needy movie star (Adjani’s almost ludicrous beauty helps too). To turn this subject matter into a comedy, even an often funny one, is a gamble that Bon Voyage, with its mix of silliness and earnest patriotism, almost pulls off. In French with English subtitles. (114 minutes) At the Avon.
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