Starring Gad Elmaleh, Alice Taglioni, and Daniel Auteuil. In French with English subtitles. Rated PG.

From the age of Molií¨re to the age of the BlackBerry, French romantic comedy has been primarly concerned with making sure that the right girl marries the right boy, often while one party assiduously avoids a tempting mésalliance (a much sexier word than "mismatch", its rather anemic English equivalent). In The Valet , Francis Veber (since the death of Gérard Oury last year, now the uncrowned king of Gallic boulevard comedy) follows this tradition to the letter in a story about a poor car jockey, Franí§ois (Gad Elmaleh), who seemingly hooks up with a famous model named Elena (Alice Taglioni), even though he's really in love with his childhood sweetheart (Virginie Ledoyen).

Inevitably, things are not what they seem. Elena is really the girlfriend of Pierre Levasseur (Daniel Auteuil), a sleazy businessman who wants to keep his extracurricular activities well-hidden from the eyes of his suspicious wife (Kristin Scott Thomas), not least because she's a 60-percent shareholder in his economic activities. Franí§ois (the valet of the title) is therefore just the designated patsy whose job it is to allay Madame Levasseur's suspicions. The problem is, just like in the movies, if you pretend that you're in love with someone long enough, your feelings just might kick in at some point. Then jealousy rears its green-fanged head, along with suspicion, doubt, and a lot of other comic emotions (comic when they're happening to somebody else, that is).

As one would expect from the director of Les Compí¨res , The Closet , and countless other crowd pleasers, the humour is more visual than verbal, but it never degenerates into slapstick. This is fluff, pure and simple, and as fluff, it's well nigh perfect.