Viviane Denvert is herself a creature of the movies, an idol of the French cinema with a string of conquered men behind her. Isabelle Adjani plays her wearing a Paulette Goddard wig and with a very funny attention to the kind of movie star vanity that believes in the eternal drama of the subject's own life. Shortly after we meet Viviane, she has shot a lover dead and pinned the murder on an old flame, but what else can a poor girl do if she's to avoid scandal?
The old flame, a young man named Frederic (Gregori Derangere) ends up in jail, but escapes when the prisons are emptied on June 14, 1940, as the Nazis enter Paris. He ends up catching a train for Bordeaux along with what seems like the rest of the country: descending upon the sleepy coastal city are French politicians, wealthy Parisian twits, lower-class refugees, fleeing physicists . . . and one beautiful film star.
Director Jean-Paul Rappeneau ("The Horseman on the Roof") vividly recreates the snarled side streets, the crammed hotel lobbies, the rumor and panic: One of the great pleasures of "Bon Voyage" is its evocation of a precise time and place in history. Against that backdrop, Rappeneau places his gallery of fools and lets them chase each other around.
There's Viviane, of course, and her new lover, Minister of Justice Jean-Etienne Beaufort (Gerard Depardieu, with slicked hair and distant demeanor). Frederic is joined by his jailmate, a happy-go-lucky con man named Raoul (Yvan Attal of "My Wife Is an Actress"), and two acquaintances they've met on the train: elderly Professor Kopolski (Jean-Marc Stehle) and his bookish, luscious assistant Camille (Virginie Ledoyen).
The Professor has a cargo of "heavy water" he needs to get to England; a government minister would help him escape; Frederic knows Viviane, who knows that minister. There's still that little matter of her framing him for murder, and of the randy playboy nephew (Nicolas Vaude) of the deceased, and of a reporter (Peter Coyote) with an ace up his sleeve. And so we're off to the races.
