"La Doublure"/ The Valet

The Valet (French: La doublure) is a 2006 French comedy film written and directed by Francis Veber and starring Gad Elmaleh, Alice Taglioni, Daniel Auteuil, and Kristin Scott Thomas. The screenplay focuses on a parking valetwho is enlisted to pretend to be the lover of a famous fashion model in order to deflect attention from her relationship with a married businessman.

Pierre Levasseur is a wealthy married Parisian executive involved in an affair with top model Elena Simonsen. When a paparazzo catches the two of them departing their secret hideaway and their photograph is published on the front page of the local newspaper, Pierre's wife Christine confronts him. He claims he has no idea who the woman is, and that she must have been a companion of the man seen walking beside them. Fully aware of Pierre's difficult situation, Elena gives him an ultimatum: he must choose between her and his wife. Because Christine is the majority shareholder of his business, Pierre is in danger of losing his fortune if he divorces her. His lawyer Maître Foix advises him the only way to resolve the issue is to find the anonymous man in the photo and have him pose as Elena's lover.

  

The anonymous man is the hapless François Pignon, a parking valet who is in love with bookstore owner Émilie. Deep in debt and worried about her business, she has turned down his marriage proposal because she believes she has too much on her plate, and thinks of him as a brother. Meanwhile, Maître Foix locates François and offers him money to let Elena move in with him and pretend they are a couple. François agrees and asks for 32,450 euros: the exact amount of money that will pay off Émilie's debts. Meanwhile, Elena demands 20 million euros to participate in the sham relationship, a sum she keeps as a deposit that she will return to Pierre when he leaves his wife. Dislodging his friend and roommate Richard, Elena moves in with François, who is overwhelmed by the situation, but the two quickly become friends.

 

Christine is not fooled and plays the situation for all it is worth, making her husband jealous of François and Elena's living situation. Émilie, too, is confused and upset to see François and Elena together. Eventually, Elena explains the situation to Émilie, who is grateful for the funding François requested for her, and she acquires a newfound respect for him and eventually accepts François' proposal.

In the meantime, Christine secretly tape records Pierre saying he has no intention of leaving her for Elena and offering to take his wife on a second honeymoon. When she sends the tape to Elena, Elena decides to leave Pierre. She notifies Pierre of her leaving by sending François to meet him in her car at a secret rendezvous point. François conveys the news to Pierre who angrily responds that he has voided the 20 million euro transfer. François then tells Pierre that Elena anticipated this of him and indicates that she never wanted the money implying that Elena leaves the relationship with a clean split. François then walks away from the limo as a cross-dressing prostitute approaches Pierre and the two are photographed by a paparazzo.

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If you love to hate the superrich, “The Valet,” a delectable comedy in which the great French actor Daniel Auteuil portrays a piggy billionaire industrialist facing his comeuppance, is a sinfully delicious bonbon. His character, the beady-eyed Pierre Levasseur, is a human rodent with an explosive temper and an ego the size of Versailles; his nostrils twitch like rat whiskers when he flashes a sickly smile. A liar, a bully and a cheapskate, he has broken every promise he made to the picketing workers who threaten to close down his factories.

But a possible strike is a minor nuisance compared with the domestic crisis that looms after a tabloid splashes a picture of Pierre on the street with Elena (Alice Taglioni), the spectacular supermodel who has been his mistress for two years and counting. The lovers are caught on camera by a stalking paparazzo when, in a rare lapse of discretion, Pierre chases her onto the street after a fight. She has just delivered the usual ultimatum: Divorce your wife or it’s over.

That wife, Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas), is no worn-out doormat. Beautiful, haughty and imperturbably cool, she owns 60 percent of Pierre’s business. A divorce would cost him dearly. Frantic to keep both wife and mistress in their places, Pierre appeals to his sleazy lawyer, Mr. Foix (Richard Berry), to do something.

The only solution, Mr. Foix decides, is that the world must be convinced that the blurry third figure in the photograph is Elena’s actual lover. The passer-by must be tracked down and paid to collaborate in a public charade of living happily with Elena. For her part in the game, Elena is to receive a “deposit” of 20 million euros, which she will return once Pierre gets a divorce. The diabolical Mr. Foix of course has contrived a loophole to make sure Elena never gets a cent.

The mysterious third party, François Pignon (Gad Elmaleh, who resembles a younger, homelier Nicolas Cage), turns out to be a humble parking valet at a swank Paris hotel who shares a dumpy apartment with his co-worker Richard (Dany Boon). François is despondent because his close childhood friend Émilie (Virginie Ledoyen) has just rejected his marriage proposal. Pressured by Mr. Foix, he agrees to play along in return for 34,450 euros, the exact sum Émilie has borrowed to open a book shop, which François intends to give her once the game is over.

Francis Veber, who wrote and directed “The Valet,” is a master of the modern French farce. And this film has the same tight structure and carefully plotted surprises and reversals as his earlier comedies “The Dinner Game” and “The Closet.” These movies are wonderfully frothy contrivances, built with traditional machinery from models that have been around for centuries.

As the story plays out, age-old tricks are played with up-to-date toys. A purloined letter is now a tiny concealed tape recorder. Instead of people hiding behind doors and in closets, we get snooping paparazzi staking out spots from which to photograph the blissful couple after Elena is installed in François’s apartment.

Subplots and subsidiary characters multiply. Pierre and Christine hire rival detectives to report back to them, and naturally they cross paths. One of the wittiest subplots involves the exiled roommate, Richard, who can’t believe that someone like Elena would look twice at François.

Because its structure and the targets of its satire — vanity, greed and lust — hark back to Molière, “The Valet” offers a reassuring vision of a fixed social order, bourgeois to the core, in which virtue is rewarded and hubris exposed. For all its cynicism about sex, money and power, it doesn’t rock any boats.

The rich are greedy, corrupt, insecure and scheming, and the valets of this world, personified by the sweet-natured François, have their feet on the ground and their values intact. In between are high-flying birds like Elena, a free spirit, fending for herself. She may have few illusions, but she still has enough integrity to recognize and respect the decency of her partner in deception.