Customer Reviews

La Doublure (Original French Version with English Subtitles)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I don't know that you can say that the French do farce BETTER than anyone else, but they do do it different, and VIVE Ca! There's nothing startlingly original about LA DOUBLURE (THE VALET): you kinda know where it's going most of the time, but then again, you probably won't complain about going along for the ride either. Et la difference? Well, the film is unabashedly slight. Farce does not have to be so da*n LOUD as many of us on this side of the lac seem to think. LA DOUBLURE proceeds at its own gentle, genial pace, and provides the audience with, really, just enough laughs along the way. You may not find it a real knee-slapper, but you will get a few chuckles out of this charmer--and lots of wry smiles.

Many of the cast members were unfamiliar to me, although I've had a mad crush on Virginie Ledoyen since I saw her in 8 WOMEN a few years ago. And Kristin Scott Thomas is as elegant and as watchable as ever. I guess those claims about her mastery of the French language were all true, but who knew she could project that unique brand of upper class French hautiness so stunningly? Gad Elmaleh has the title role, and there hasn't been as winning a sad sack on screen since, oh, I dunno, Buster Keaton maybe. And Alice Traglioni is stunning--and likable--as the supermodel Elena.

So anyway, (Defense de spoiler!)this is just another one of those shlub-of-a-guy-gets-paid-to-briefly-do-a-sham-shackup-with-Paris'-top-model-to-cover-up-her-actual-affair-with-a-top-CEO stories. And we all know the outcome. The shlub and the top model are going to fall in love. No? That's not it. Wait, wait! OK, the shlub will attempt to make his real true love jealous and eventually win her heart. WHEW, got it.
OK, OK, there's only so many ways the movie can go. But it does have so much heart, and quite a bit of flair--to say nothing of an appealing cast and, yes, just a hint of social commentary. (This is France, after all, somebody's gotta go on strike: and class distinctions gotta be acknowledged and played upon for all they're worth).

It's fluff, but it's intelligent fluff. Vas-y. Enjoy!

If you want to laugh and forget your worries, "The Valet/La Doublure" is just what you need. I expected this film to be a bit corny and silly, but it was not. It was predictable, I suppose, but that did not matter one tiny bit. The actors are all so superb that they make this a new adventure that you MUST see!

I was only sad to see this film end. It made me feel so happy and good that I left the theatre promising to buy the DVD as soon as it becomes available in America.

This is a great little film. I can not recommend it highly enough. Enjoy!

A previous reviewer has offered these words in praise of this movie: "you kinda know where it's going most of the time, but then again, you probably won't complain about going along for the ride either.... Well, the film is unabashedly slight.... LA DOUBLURE proceeds at its own gentle, genial pace, and provides the audience with, really, just enough laughs along the way." It so happens that I pretty much agree with everything except for the "just enough laughs" bit. Unlike that reviewer, however, I regard those words not as praise but as a damning indictment.

"M. Hulot's Holiday" proceeded at its own gentle, genial pace, just like this film. Just unlike this film, it also managed to be funny (hysterically, screamingly funny, as a matter of fact.)

"[Y]ou kinda know where it going," he said. Yeah, after about five minutes I knew where it was going--just like I know where the dinosaurs were going. They're dead and so, for all intents and purposes, was this flick.

This is a two-minute, slightly off-color joke stretched out to about ninety minutes. Once the set-up for the joke is made, that's all there is. There isn't even anything that can honestly be called a punchline. Even the grossly obvious product placements for Givenchy and Karl Lagerfeld manage to fall flat.

The screenplay is nothing more than a bare sketch. Brilliant performers might have been able to pull something out of it. Horse-faced Fernandel in the role of the hapless parking attendant (or the "shlub" as the earlier reviewer called him) would have greeted the outrageous fortune falling upon his head with vast and Gallic acceptance. Lithe, blithe Jacques Tati would have regarded the whole thing with utter incomprehension and before he was done, so would everyone else around him. Buster Keaton, about half-way through, would suddenly realize what was going on, decide what had to be done, and with a determined expression, go out and DO IT, while incidently dissolving his audience in laughter. Here, Gad Elmaleh just says the lines. Imagine the worst performance ever given by Jerry Seinfeld, then cut the energy in half and you have Elmaleh. He is a piece of lint in the laundry of life.

Every scene is flat and by the numbers. The supermodel (apparently the word is "topmodel" in French) character hasn't the vestige of a spark. She is a moderately pretty girl with a vaguely sweet personality, no more. The bookstore owner, the "shlub's" one true love, is written as a rather heartless character out for the main chance. The actress in the role offers nothing to make her more attractive. Her father, a doctor, on the other hand, is the protagonist of an entirely different joke from the one that generates the film as a whole. Interestingly enough, the two jokes never interact; whenever the "shlub" speaks with him, the "shlub" departs his own joke and enters into the doctor's.

The one character who might have risen above the general mediocrity is the philandering, billionaire husband. He is a very French farcical type, a silk stocking so stuffed with hypocrisy, lechery and self-centered pomposity that his long-anticipated fall becomes a delight, but still someone whose very awfulness has in it an undeniable charm. (A fine example of the breed is the father of the bride-to-be in "La Cage au Folles.") In "La Doublure," alas, the actor entrusted with the part is too small both in stature and ability to bring it off. He is just a nasty little man.

Finally, let's go back to the matter of that missing punchline. The film ends with what is obviously the wind-up of a gag. Now, the main joke, the one about the "shlub," his girl friend, the philanderering husband, the suspicious wife and the supermodel, could have ended neatly with any or all of several punchlines: the "shlub" and the girlfriend re-united, the wife smugly triumphant, the husband utterly defeated, the newly super-prosperous supermodel cruising for another sugar daddy. "La Doublure" does end with one of the characters being seriously discommoded, true enough, but that character's fate does not in any way arise from the set-up of the main joke of the movie, nor even from the doctor's joke. Quite inexplicably, the movie ends with the punchline of a joke that it has not told at any point during its running time.

This movie is not awful. It isn't ambitious enough to be honestly awful.

Two indifferent stars.

A SMALL SUGGESTION: The film played in the theaters of Vancouver in French with English subtitles, but it was called by an English name, "The Valet." If the film is ever remade in English, I strongly suggest that a better title for it would be "Valet Parking," a name that has some resonance with the central joke of the picture and eliminates confusion with "The Dresser" on one side and Jeeves and Bertie Wooster on the other.