Contratado para Amar

I really enjoyed The Valet. It's a sweet little film that had me grinning the whole way through. My smiles were only interrupted now and then by bursts of laughter.

Gad Elmaleh plays a valet who through pure chance is photographed with a billionaire (the always wonderful Daniel Auteuil) and his mistress, a famous supermodel. When the photo turns up in the tabloids the billionaire must convince his wife that the supermodel is really with the valet, so he gets them to live together while his wife has them shadowed by private investigators. The plan backfires on the billionaire when he finds himself consumed with jealousy at the thought of his mistress spending the night with another man, so he also sends private investigators to watch them. Meanwhile the Valet has romantic problems of his own that are complicated by the fact that all of a sudden he finds himself shacking up with the most beautiful woman in France. It's a cute and funny little romantic comedy.

I'm 50/50 on foreign films as subtitles often give me tired-head. Having said that, this film is surprisingly witty, well-paced and in the spirit of La Cage Aux Folles or Victor/Victoria - without musical numbers.

If you've seen and enjoyed the original or foreign versions of The Monster, Night on Earth or the aforementioned La Cage Aux Folles or Victor/Victoria you shouldn't be disappointed. Like most recent releases it's long on closeups and two-shots yet lacks intimacy - which is OK for comedies of the ilk. And in the final analysis, the spirit of wacky comedy is clearly presented in a way that only the French conceive.

While not the pinnacle of Veber's cinematic achievements, it's certainly no bust. By comparison, the American master of this genre, Blake Edwards, has had his fair share of hits and misses and I could easily see him directing the American version.

In a nutshell, it's a nice little date rental - cute romance with a touch of culture and a lot of humor.

Nothing new under the sun:wives,lovers,girlfriends,mistaken identities...But why deny yourself a good thing,an entertaining unpretentious funny little comedy?You should be wrong.

An excellent cast,male and female,gives this trite story substance.Daniel Auteuil,as the villain,a smug mean bourgeois who thinks that money can buy everything,Kristin Scott-Thomas ,as his cheated wife who threatens to ask for a divorce (and it is her who owns the dough),Alice Taglioni as the gorgeous but sensitive top model (definitely not a bimbo),Gad Elmaleh as the clumsy shy prole,Virginie Ledoyen ,one of the most promising French actresses,as a sentimental bookseller and Richard Berry as Auteuil's lawyer.

A few nods to "rear window" .And a very funny (and moral) ending.

Needing something lightly comic, Veber was my man.

His "The Closet" was trivial, but few trivial things are amusing and fondly recalled. Here, with a different actor, is the same character with much the same quality.

I won't bother you with the story. It doesn't matter. What matters is the way the humor is designed. Essentially all the humor is in the lines. There is no physical comedy here and almost no visual comedy. It is mostly in the dialog. Here is the trick: where other comedy is episodic and/or depends on a zany pace, this has pretty much a normal world, and normal pace. You cannot read the warning signs that a joke is coming. It could appear at any moment, and does from the very beginning.

So very early in the game we are trained to engage ourself very closely and pay attention. This is painless because the world we invest in is so light. We need erect no barriers. Because we open ourselves so, we anticipate what might be funny, investing in the possibility. The form of the thing enlists us in making funny.

This is easy to test. I believe it to be true, and honorably delicate in the way it helps us live.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

As others have said on the messages boards (and I won't refer to them to avoid spoilers), there were a lot of plot problems in this movie, but it didn't matter. The basic premise is absurd: an important CEO, photographed with a young supermodel, tries to convince his wife that the supermodel is really dating the commoner (who works as a valet) who just happened to be walking past when the picture was taken. The CEO pays the valet to pose as the supermodel's boyfriend, the wife doesn't buy it, and things progress from there. The valet is a nice guy who is down and out, but doing the best he can with what he was given; the CEO is a bad guy: in an American movie, you could guess the outcome, but this is a French movie, so you're on your own!

On a side note, Francis Veber also wrote and directed Le dîner de cons, which we found very disappointing after enjoying La Doublure.