AND NOW LADIES & GENTLEMAN

AND NOW LADIES & GENTLEMEN is a wonderfully entertaining, amusing, and somewhat perplexing French movie from Claude Lalouch. The key to comprehending it is the quote at the beginning, “Life is a deep sleep of which love is a dream.” The lines between sleep, dreams and reality often blur in this movie.

The story opens with a blonde-haired woman, Jane (Patricia Kaas), being ministered to by a Moroccan faith healer. The healer is either a dervish or a witchdoctor. She eventually tells the woman, Jane, that she can’t help her, and that Jane should go pray at the tomb of Lilla Chaffia, a dead saint.

In the next scene, Jane is singing in a cabaret number with her best friend, a black woman singer. They are both superb.

Cut to a parallel storyline. Valentin (played by Jeremy Irons) is in an expensive jewelry store, presenting himself as a police detective and telling the manager that the store is about to be robbed. Valentin says to let the robber have all their jewels, and the police will nab him when he steps outside. He points out all the police detectives outside. He comes back a few minutes later in a phony disguise, robs the place, tells the manager and the clerk to count to one hundred, and leaves. When the police don’t stop Valentin, the manager runs out, asking the purported detectives if they are the police. Of course, none of them are – they are just passersby.

Next, Valentine robs a store in Paris. He enlists the aid of a beautiful young clerk at the store by secretly puncturing, then offering to repair her tire. He asks her if he can go into the vault to see some rare jewels. When he robs the store, he takes her hostage.

Later he presents her with a beautiful and expensive car as a gift. The two become lovers, and years later they are still together.

However, by this time, Valentin and Jane in the parallel story are experiencing blackouts. Jane forgets the ending of her songs. She eventually exhausts the places to sing in Paris and ends up going to Morocco to get a singing job.

Valentin, meanwhile, buys a yacht to sail around the world to get away from his girlfriend. He passes out on the yacht and ends up in Morocco.

Valentin and Jane meet and fall in love. A robbery occurs, and the police accuse Valentin of being the robber. The resolution is a total surprise.

AND NOW LADIES & GENTLEMEN presents some moral messages. By the end, Valentin is trying to repay all the people whom he robbed. Although there is a romantic element to the movie, the movie rebukes, in its own way, cohabitation between unmarried men and women and suggests that there has to be a deeper spiritual commitment.

Claude Lalouch is a great director, and here he is at the top of his form. He mixes adventure, humor, drama, anxiety, and romance, as well as a spiritual quest with a very light touch. The musical numbers are seamlessly woven into the film, and the sound quality is excellent. Having just gone to a Hollywood blockbuster, it was amazing to hear the resonance, breadth, and depth of the musical numbers in this French film, something many movies don’t achieve. Sound can often make a movie, as it did with SOUND OF MUSIC and SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN, and it certainly does so here. Patricias Kaas is a superb actress and Jeremy Irons, though always good and competent, doesn’t seem to come up to her level of intensity or vibrancy.

Regrettably, the movie has some occult elements to it, a seeming endorsement of robbery, which is eventually rebuked, and a careless attitude about sexual relationships, although it is surprising in this French film that there is no sexual activity except for a few kisses. On the other hand, the movie is highly entertaining, and one of the best French films to come out in years.

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SUMMARY: In the movie AND NOW LADIES & GENTLEMEN, Valentin is a jewel thief, who is trying to escape his past, and Jane is a singer who flees Paris. They meet in Morocco, fall in love, a robbery occurs, and the police accuse Valentin. This is an entertaining French movie that presents some moral messages, but also has some pagan elements to it.