And Now... Ladies and Gentlemen

Plot

Valentin (also known as And Now...Ladies and Gentleman) is directed by Claude Lelouch and features Jeremy Irons as Valentin, a criminal mastermind whose jewel-stealing business, despite having made him rich, does not offer him much room for personal growth. Hoping to find meaning for his existence, Valentin buys a boat and sets off on a one-man sailing trip around the world, with the police at his heels. At the same time, a burned-out jazz singer named Jane (Patricia Kaas) is in Morocco trying to forget an ill-fated love affair. Valentin, after being struck by a serious illness, makes an emergency landing on the Moroccan coast. Jane soon crosses paths with the suave con artist, and they begin a relationship. Valentin, filmed in France, England, and Morocco, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002. The supporting cast of Valentin includes Xavier Lecoeur, Romula Walker, and Laura Mayne-Kerbrat. ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi

Review

And Now...Ladies and Gentlemen is more classy than compelling. It's exotic in a conventional way, with a suave high-class jewel thief, a French singer trying to forget her past, a Moroccan locale, and other details that seem more like movie homages than fully developed story ideas. The visuals are suitably lush, the score is appropriately romantic, and the memory blackouts provide director Claude Lelouch with a character-based reason to fiddle with the film's narrative structure (which is interesting most of the time but annoying at the end). However, there isn't a lot of heat between the two leads, the supporting characters are underdeveloped (and their story lines are distracting), the film's tone fluctuates unevenly from one scene to the next, and there's not much narrative drive to this movie. The end result is an attractive-looking motion picture that isn't fully satisfying emotionally. ~ Todd Kristel, Rovi

Cast

• Jeremy Irons - Valentin
• Patricia Kaas - Jane Lester
• Thierry Lhermitte - Thierry
• Alessandra Martines - Francoise
• Jean-Marie Bigard - Dr. Lamy/Pharmacist

Ticky Holgado - Boubou; Yvan Attal - David; Amidou - Police Inspector; Sylvie Loeillet - Soleil; Patrick Braoudé - Paris Jeweler; Claudia Cardinale - Contessa Falconetti; Constantin Alexandrov; Stephane Ferrara; Samuel Labarthe; Paul Freeman; Souad Amidou; Laura Mayne-Kerbrat; Gregory Reznik; Charles Gerard; Nicholas Jones; Nabil Massad; Mouna Fettou

Credit

Naima Bouanani - Art Director, Martin Izzard - Art Director, Arlette Gordon - Casting, Paul Hitchcock - Co-producer, Martine Kampf-Dussart - Co-producer, Rick Senat - Co-producer, Pierre Bechir - Costume Designer, Domonique Combe - First Assistant Director, Claude Lelouch - Director, Helene de Luze - Editor, Tania Zazulinsky - Executive Producer, Jean Paul de Vidas - Executive Producer, Michel Legrand - Composer (Music Score), Robin Millar - Musical Arrangement, Boris Bergman - Songwriter, Paul Ives - Songwriter, Johann George - Production Designer, Pierre-Wiliam Glenn - Cinematographer, Claude Lelouch - Producer, Harald Maury - Sound/Sound Designer, Claude Lelouch - Screenwriter, Pierre Uytterhoeven - Screenwriter, Pierre Leroux - Screenwriter

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