Gad Elmaleh

Gad Elmaleh, the disarming French-Moroccan star of "The Valet," is the chief reason to see this slick comic truffle set along the Cote d'Azur. Elmaleh elevates the nettlesome role of Jean, a retiring hotel bartender mistakenly thought to be a wealthy...

The dollar may not be much against the euro these days, but your dollar can buy a very impressive line-up of films offered by the Gene Siskel Film Center's 11th annual European Union Film Festival. This year's slate, running March 7 through April 3,...

(B) At least as translated from the French, "Priceless" takes its title from the MasterCard commercials that list the cost of goods and services, then announce that qualities like joy or satisfaction are "priceless." This wispy romantic comedy offers...

The fetching comedy "Priceless" ("Hors de Prix") weighs about as much as its star, Audrey Tautou, but like Tautou's pleasingly craven heroine it knows exactly what it's doing. Tautou plays a gold digger working her way through a series of sugar daddies in...

AUDREY TAUTOU became famous for playing a naif in "Amélie" seven years ago, but clearly, she's over it now. In "Priceless" (Hors de Prix), a new comedy directed and co-written by Pierre Salvadori, Tautou stars as a woman dependent on the kindness of...

THE VALET (PG-13). The bedroom door, that time-honored prop of the French farce, has been replaced by the slamming auto door in Francis Veber's frolicsome "The Valet." Veber's titular parking attendant Francois Pignon (Gad Elmaleh), who spends his...

2½ stars (out of four) Boulevard comedy may be paved with froth, but it's not easy for a writer to set up the right narrative equipment and for performers to run it properly. "The Valet" ("La Doublure" in its successful French debut) is the latest from...

Friday June 13, 1997      "Salut Cousin!" is the timeless story of the naive stranger coming to the big city, and Franco-Algerian filmmaker Merzak Allouache brings to it a freshness, vitality and beguiling rueful humor.      The film is too long by 10...