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La Valise
1973 Comedy / Thriller
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Credits
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Director: Georges Lautner
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Script: Georges Lautner, Francis Veber
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Photo: Alain Boisnard, Maurice Fellous
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Music: Philippe Sarde
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Cast: Mireille Darc (Françoise),
Michel Constantin (Le capitaine Georges Augier),
Jean-Pierre Marielle (Le
commandant Bloch),
Michel Galabru (Milandris,
dit "Baby"),
Amidou (Le lieutenant Abdul Fouad),
Jean Lefebvre (Le bagagiste),
Robert Dalban (Le colonel Mercier),
Raoul Saint-Yves (L’ambassadeur)
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Country: France
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Language: French
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Runtime: 100 min
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Aka: Man in the Trunk; The Girl in the Trunk
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Summary
Finding himself the enemy of the entire Arab world, Commandant Bloch, a high-ranking Israeli
spy, takes refuge in the French Embassy in Tripoli. Captain Augier is given the
task of smuggling Bloch out of the country in a diplomatic suitcase. A strike at
the airport thwarts the scheme and the two men are holed up in a hotel, in fact the very
hotel where Bloch met the love of his life, Françoise. Suspecting he was
betrayed by his former lover, Block asks Augier to keep an eye on her. Augier himself
ends up falling in love with Françoise, and intends to return to Paris with her.
When the airport strike is over, Augier resumes his mission, but no sooner has the aeroplane
taken off than it is hijacked. Landing in the desert, Augier and Françoise
find themselves prisoners of a band of ruthless Arabs, who will surely kill Bloch if they
knew he was hiding in a suitcase on board the plane...
Review
This run-of-the-mill comedy-thriller affords some memorable comic moments but will be
most appreciated by fans of the super-sexy Mireille Darc. A familiar face in Georges
Lautner’s films, Michel Constantin gets a rare lead role, and works well along side
the magnificent Jean-Pierre Marielle. By far the most memorable sequence in the
film is the one where Jean Lefebvre struggles with the huge suitcase of the film’s
title; if the rest of the film had been as inventive and funny, La
Valise would probably rank as a comic masterpiece. As it is, Francis Veber’s
script is occasionally amusing (and wondrously politically incorrect), but not up to the
standard of some of the writer’s later work.
© James Travers 2005
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