European Films

The character François Pignon is back in Francis Veber’s continuing series of the average man’s adventures, with the latest instalment, La doublure (The Valet), again the familiar mixture of hilarious antics and a first rate cast. Pignon is again played by a fresh face; this time around Moroccan-born comedian Gad Elmaleh (Chouchou). In a neat twist, Pignon’s antagonist is played by Daniel Auteuil, who was the Pignon character in Veber’s previous outing entitled Le placard (The Closet).

Elmaleh’s last film was Olé!, the Christmas release in which he starred as the Spanish driver of the Gérard Depardieu character named, perhaps not coincidentally, François Veber. In La doublure Elmaleh still drives other people’s cars, though this time as a parking valet at a swanky café with a view on the Eiffel Tower. Modest lower class worker Pignon is desperate to marry his childhood sweetheart Emilie (Virginie Ledoyen), though through a happenstance (or rather the well-oiled machinations of Veber’s plot) he finds himself in his creaky, single bed with a supermodel (Alice Taglioni) instead – and even gets paid for it!

The reasons are twofold: Emilie does not want to marry him since she has too many worries and debts after the recent opening of her own bookshop, and a CEO called Levasseur (Auteuil) is afraid he will loose the majority stake in his company which belongs to his wife Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas) if she discovers that he has been cheating on her with a gorgeous – and much younger – model. What might trigger this discovery is the publication of a picture of Levasseur and his squeeze in which Pignon also figures, albeit as an innocent passer-by. Levasseur’s infinitely resourceful but overly informal lawyer Maître Foix (Richard Berry) has the solution: Christine should be convinced that her husband was the passer-by and that humble valet and the blonde sexpot are in fact lovers.

The film’s plot is as complicated as any a farce – needing to manoeuvre in countless directions to stretch the joke to feature film length. A look at an obnoxious suitor who is after Virginie and the repeated visits of a very ill doctor to Pignon’s father help pad out the film’s length to a still breezy 85 minutes, though both these subplots could easily go, which indicates that despite its fun premise, this comedy does not really have enough meat on its bones. Audiences are not likely to care or notice, however, as Veber makes the proceedings fly by so rapidly and keeps the jokes coming at a neck-breaking speed.

The acting in La doublure is top notch, which is what makes all of Veber’s comedies stand out in the crowd. Elmaleh essays a very subdued Pignon with ease and heaps of low-key charm, a lesson Ledoyen also seems to have taken to heart for her Emilie. Daniel Auteuil on the other hand is deliciously over the top as Levasseur, showing once again, after his recent dramatic turn in Caché (Hidden), why he is considered one of France’s most versatile actors, while Richard Berry, as Levasseur’s fidgety lawyer, almost steals the show. Scott Thomas does haughty very well even in French, and her lip-synching qualities have vastly improved since her turn in Gallic adventure Arsène Lupin; the dubbing of her own voice is almost perfectly timed here and her remaining British twang only slight. Alice Taglioni may not totally convince as a top model but she does imbue her character with enough spunk to make the audience buy into an inherently silly premise: who but Taglioni’s Elena would want to save the marriage of her lover to her possible detriment?

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