Casablanca (1942) was such a successful film that imitators were bound to arise but fail. Bon Voyage, directed and written by Jean-Paul Rappeneau, is a French film about fugitives from the Nazis, spies, turncoats, and unrequited love affairs that has recently arisen yet succeeded. The film begins in 1939 at a première performance of a film starring Viviane Denvert (played by Isabelle Adjani). Although Viviane in the balcony receives applause at the end of the film, including words of praise from Interior Minister Beaufort (played by Gérard Depardieu), André Arpel (played by Nicolas Pignon) stares daggers at her from a seat below; she terminated her love affair with him after he provided financial backing for her career and stealing some jewels from him. Arpel follows her escort, who drops her off at her apartment, forces his way into her apartment, the two struggle, Viviane pulls out a gun and kills him. She then telephones Frédéric (played by Grégori Derangère), a journalist and writer who grew up with her, mysteriously asking for help. Upon arrival at her apartment, she shows Frédéric the body, tells him that he died in an accidental fall from the second floor during a struggle, and persuades him to put the body into the boot of his car, which he plans to drown in a nearby canal. En route, however, Frédéric has difficulty seeing the road during a rainstorm, and the car crashes into a post, leaving him unconscious. When he awakens, he has been arrested for Arpel’s murder. Before the trial, now June 14, 1940, the German army is about to capture Paris, so the prisoners are herded, two handcuffed together at a time, into police vans to go south. However, Frédéric is handcuffed with a prisoner named Raoul (played by Yvan Attai), who cleverly escapes police custody and detaches himself from his handcuff. Frédéric, nevertheless, is not very fast on his feet, so he remains behind and ultimately takes a train to Bordeaux. While on the train, he meets Camille (played by Viriginie Ledoyen), the student assistant of Professor Kopolski (played by Jean-Marc Stehlé), who is desperately trying to take heavy water to England before the Nazis discover what he has developed that might be turned into an atomic bomb. While, Viviane pleads with Minister Beaufort to stop police from interrogating her as a precondition to an affair with him, English journalist and Nazi spy Alex Winckler (played by Peter Coyote) also courts her, and soon Arpel’s son (played by Nicolas Vaude) pursues her as well. The entire French Senate takes the train to Bordeaux, debates various options, and ultimately appoints Marshall Pétain as the new Premier, who in turn surrenders to the Germans, an option that Beaufort supports. Meanwhile, Camille falls in love with Frédéric, and Raoul tries to attract interest from Camille. The intertwined plots and subplots are accompanied by fast-paced music by Gabriel Yared to increase the tempo of the complex yet often amusing twists and turns that portray some of the French as chickens going about with their heads cut off in time of crisis. MH