"And Now ... Ladies and Gentlemen" floats along like a dream about old
movies, with jewel thieves and jazz singers, racing yachts and fancy hotels
and chaste, last-chance romance.
It's a plaything for adults - sophisticated, elegant and utterly
disposable.
Venerable French writer-director Claude Lelouch must have been overcome by
feverish romanticism when he cooked up this story about a thief named
Valentin (Jeremy Irons. He pulls off impossibly clever heists while
outfitted in ridiculous disguises and dreams about returning his loot to the
victims, with no hard feelings.
He's fated to meet Jane Lester (Patricia Kaas), a sultry blond jazz singer
who's been burned by love so many times that she channels her disappointment
every time she performs. Lelouch even trots out the hoariest plot device of
all, amnesia, as a way of bringing his would-be lovers together. Both
Valentin and Jane are plagued by blackouts, which in Jane's case Lelouch
represents by draining the color out of the film, leaving her in a
bewildering alternate universe.
Lelouch takes his time getting the leads in the same place. He cuts between
them frequently, luxuriating in their anomie, with Kaas' smoky crooning
setting the mood.
Jane finds herself upended personally and professionally when her trumpet
player, with whom she had been involved, chooses her duet partner over her.
Though she's talented enough to command large audiences at top-tier jazz
clubs, she finds herself singing in hotel lobbies and aboard dinner boats,
embracing the easy paychecks and indifferent crowds.
Valentin, meanwhile, is consumed with regret over his heists - which we see
unfold in some highly amusing flashbacks - and that puts strain on his
relationship with his longtime love, Francoise (Allesandra Martines). He
buys a speedy sailboat from a yachtsman named Thierry (Thierry Lhermitte)
with an eye toward sailing around the world. (Thierry has his eye on
Francoise.)
Jane takes a monthlong gig singing in a hotel in Morocco. Valentin, at the
beginning of his sailing journey, has a blackout and ends up unintentionally
moored nearby. After Valentin sees the same doctor Jane has seen before for
the same condition and checks into the hotel where she's staying, they
finally meet.
Valentin also casts his eye on an Italian socialite (one-time bombshell
Claudia Cardinale, now a graceful 65) and soon a masked man slips into her
room and steals her jewels. It sure looks like Valentin's work, but the next
morning, amnesia allows him a plausible excuse: He claims not to remember
whether he's the culprit or not.
Lelouch's approach to narrative is at times too relaxed for his own good; a
subplot involving a boxer, his wife (who watches Valentin's boat for him)
and a con artist amounts to little. And in reviving some of the editing
techniques and the mixture of black and white and color from his 1966
breakthrough "A Man and a Woman," he only reveals how fresh his style once
was.
Still, he's onto something, particularly in the quiet, intimate dialogue
scenes, which are beautifully directed. He loves studying the face of Kaas,
a French jazz singer making her acting debut, and it holds up to scrutiny -
sometimes a picture of weary resignation, sometimes radiant with a
youthful-looking beauty (Kaas is 36).
Irons is all enervated English elegance in a role that's perfect for him.
It's nice to see him doing some real acting after his recent appearances in
such dreck as "Dungeons & Dragons" and "The Time Machine."
In this summer of reality television, "And Now ... Ladies and Gentlemen"
is pure fantasy, its characters altogether too fabulous to actually exist.
They even seem to be aware of it: Jane tells Valentin she hopes he did
steal the jewels, because, she says, "I can no longer stand normal people."
If you feel the same way, this movie may be the perfect summer treat.
