Murder, False Imprisonment, Nuclear Bombs, and Nazi Spies: Bon Voyage (2003)

Murder, False Imprisonment, Nuclear Bombs, and Nazi Spies

So my friend and I after waiting an agonizing few months to find out what happened next, watched High Seas Season 2 and I was sorely disappointed in it.

I was feeling bummed and reorganizing the DVDs at work and saw this one and it intrigued me with the charm that High Seas Season 1 had. I rented it and brought it to watch with my mom.

The movie is a french film with subtitles and was amazing-comedic, dramatic, had adventure, romance, etc. It is very loosely based on the true story of Professor Lew Kowarski‘s smuggling of the world’s only supplies of heavy water out of France following its occupation by the Nazis.

Wow

So the film is set in 1940 and starts off with actress Viviane Denvert at the premiere of her newest movie. It is a hit and everyone loves her, espechially Prime Minister Jean-Étienne Beaufort (Gérard Depardieu).

Viviane should be happy, but she isn’t as the producer of the film is staring at her. When she gets home he is there and he wants “payment” for all he’s done. Cut scene, if you know what I mean.

In the next scene Viviane calls her old neighbor and boyfriend, Frédéric Auger, an aspiring writer. When he arrives she tells him that the producer attacked her and fell from the second floor. She wants Auger to help her move the body, while he wants to call the police. She is afraid to have the scandal in the papers, as it was all an accident-but Auger insists they call the police.

However, Viviane is so charming she convinces him to move the body-NOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

Seriously

You should have called the police! This will all end badly for you!!!!!!!!

So they put the body of the producer’s in Auger’s trunk and he is going to drive and dump it somewhere. Viviane offers to come with him, but he tells her he will handle it.

However, that night it is storming down buckets of rain and the windshield wiper breaks. Auger struggles trying to see and ends up crashing the car unto a police box, the pressure from the crash popping his trunk.

Bystanders come to help, and they find the body.

Next thing you know Auger is in jail for shooting the producer. Auger is completely flabbergasted and shocked to hear that the producer was shot. Even worse his lawyer won’t be able to help him as he is being set to the frontlines.

Meanwhile, Viviane has not forgotten the prime minister and heads to him, She goes on about how worried she is for herself and uses all her charm to completely wow the prime minister.

From Candlestick

Time passes and the Nazis are storming Paris to occupy it, so the jail decides to move its prisoners. All of them are chained with another, and luckily Auger gets handcuffed to Raoul, a thief who has been planning an escape. They escape from the jail, and head into an empty Paris.

Auger searches for Viviane, but it turns out that she has left with her beaux, the prime minister, for Bordeaux. As she is the only one who can help clear his name, he gets on the last train and heads after her.

From Blackmail

On the train Auger runs into Raoul who is also heading to Bordeaux as he has a get-rich-quick plan. Raoul has fallen head over heels, 100% in love with Camille, assistant to Professor Kopolski from the College de France. He keeps trying to get her to agree to go out with him, but she turns him down as they are headed to Bordeaux on an important mission.

But then Camille meets Auger, and she falls head over heels, 100% in love with him, but he still cares for Viviane-even after all she has done. Raoul tries to get him to see she was using him, but he is convinced that it is all a mistake.

Camille is traveling to meet up with Professor Kopolski and his other assistant as they are secretly trying to move heavy water out of France. Heavy water is what is used to make nuclear bombs and they had borrowed some from Sweden. With Hitler taking over Europe, they hope to send it and the Jewish professor out of the country to England.

When they arrive in Bordeaux, Raoul goes on to his plan to steal wine to sell and use, while Camille leaves to meet up with her associates.

Auger goes looking for Viviane who is staying with the Prime Minister Beaufort-he taking care of her and fulfilling her every whim. Right now he is in a stressful situation as they are trying to figure out what to do with the Germans-fight, give up, etc.

As Beaufort doesn’t have as much time for her-she has another man on her string, an American reporter (Peter Coyote) who is there to get a story and trying desperately to get Vivienne to run off with him.

Auger runs into Viviane, who wants to keep him a secret from Beaufort as the murder was highly publicized. She ducks into shops and sneaks away but eventually Beaufort gets jealous and follows her demanding to meet her friend. He invites him to lunch, which Auger does not want to be a part of.

Camille and the professor have been trying to speak to the prime minster to try and move the heavy water, but haven’t been able to get any time with him. When they spot Auger with him and Viviane they try to get him to help them. He tries to explain he doesn’t know the prime minister, but they don’t believe it.

Ugh!

Camille reveals all about the heavy water and their need to smuggle it out to Viviane. She has fallen completely for Auger-but Raoul is in love with her.

Camille!!!!

Things get further complicated when officials try to impound the car that holds the Heavy Water: Auger goes to lunch with Viviane and Beaufort and is spotted by the nephew of the man he “murdered”; the nephew after yelling and screaming at Auger starts to wonder about Viviane; Beaufort dumps Vivienne; Beaufort will not help the professor; and one of the characters is a Nazi spy after the heavy water.

This was so good!!! It was dramatic, has action, was fun, hilarious, intense-everything you could want in a film.

For more that takes place in World War II, go to Time for You to Awaken, Master. Time for You to Go Out: The Return of the Vampire (1943)

For more period films, go to A Psychic Arrives and a Ghost Haunts the Ship: High Seas Season Two (2019)

A Psychic Arrives and a Ghost Haunts the Ship: High Seas Season Two (2019)

So last year my friend and I started watching Alta Mar/High Seas after watching the trailer as it looked really good. We were both thoroughly pleased as it was AMAZING and we couldn’t stop until we finished it.

The story is of two sisters, Eva and Carolina Villanueve. They lost their father, their home country of Spain was greatly changed because of WWII, and both ladies are looking for something new. Carolina had been running the family business, but decided to sell the company and is planning to marry Fernando Fábregas (owner of the ocean liner the Barbara de Braganza). Her sister Eva doesn’t like the changes Carolina is making but is still supporting her. She is also traveling on the Barbara de Braganza to Brazil to meet with a publisher interested in her book.

On our way!

They are on their way to the ship’s dock and hit a woman, a woman running away from an abusive man with powerful connections. Eva takes pity on her, ignores Carolina, and sneaks her aboard as a stowaway. However, this woman is not who she says she is and the sisters are in for quite the journey.

Someone is murdered on the ship, it turns out their uncle Pedro and family friend Dr. Rojas have some secret they are keeping from the girls, their stowaway vanishes, someone they thought was dead is alive, and more. All this while they are on a ship in the middle of the ocean-you can see how it makes for one fantastic season.

So even though I absolutely loved it, the end of season one left quite a few things unanswered. Who did Fernando need to meet at midnight the first night? Who were those people in the middle of the ocean from a distressed ship? The guy they arrested for the murder “committed suicide” but we know he didn’t as he didn’t kill the guy. So who murdered him? Why did Fernando lie about the wedding rings being stolen?

Hmm…

So when they came out with season two last December we were so jazzed to watch it, but that enjoyment faded as it stunk.

Ugh…

It was like someone decided to take everything people loved about the first season and then do the opposite.

***Spoilers***

So after the events of the first season the uncle is okay, (his brother attacked him in the throat), the father jailed, the stowaway jailed, the evil Doctor Rojas is jailed, and Fernando picks up a group from the distressed ship: one of the people rescued, Casandra Lenormand, says she is a psychic. Is she lying? Telling the truth? One thing is for sure, she will be trouble either way.

So to make this the easiest way I can, I’m going to take this person by person. We are going to start with Carolina (Alejandra Onieva). Carolina married at midnight to Fernando, who is still acting like a jerk and lying/hiding something very important from her. Things start going downhill immediately as strange things start happening to Carolina but only things she sees. For example, her clothes in a mess about the room, and later suddenly put away.  She sees a shadowy figure, but no one else does and it is gone. Is she going crazy? Or being gaslighted?

Going mad! From Possessed

Carolina is approached the psychic who just wants to help her.

I can’t believe this. Her inserting into Carolina’s life, her just happening to be there, her “helpfulness” that make Carolina worse, and her “friendship” causing her to separate from her sister and husband-this girl is no good.

It was interesting as Beth Moore talks about people like this in her study Breaking Free and her book The Undoing of Saint Silvanus. Like this followed everything she warned about.

Casandra uses her Ouija board, revealing the name Rosa Marin. There are ghost sightings and Carolina believes that the ghost is haunting her and the ship. Carolina doesn’t trust herself, she doesn’t trust to tell her sister, she doesn’t trust her husband-espechially after finding out he was involved with Rosa Marin. The only person she finds herself trusting is Casandra.

I don’t trust her.

Carolina starts suspecting that Fernando is the one that murdered Rosa Marin, the former owner of the ship. Casandra starts putting the moves on Carolina and Carolina finds herself confused-married to Fernando but now she is uncertain of their future and considering Casandra. But it turns out the psycho psychic is a fake.

Yes, just like I thought it turns out she is a liar and her the sister was Rosa Marin. She thought Carolina murdered her sister as Fernando and Rosa were involved and going to run off together. Casandra was making Carolina think she was going crazy as she thought she killed her sister to keep Raoul. But then, she fell for Carolina and decided that Fernando must be the killer.

I feel bad for poor Carolina as she is in such a horrible mental state as Casandra and her people have been driving her crazy, AND she discovers that her husband was cheating on her and planning on jilting her. She is like all levels of just what is going on. And instead of Carolina and Eva working on this together and trying to figure out what happened- Carolina spends zero time with her sister until the very end. The sisterly bonds was what I found so enjoyable about the first season, and they completely threw it out the window.

Seriously

So you think after all this Fernando would have Casandra locked up, you know due to the fact she contrived a way to get there (creating a mayday signal and claiming their ship sunk), was trying to drive Carolina insane, and frame Fernando for murder of her sister because she believes he is the killer, right? But no, even though Cassandra just did a huge Scooby-Doo plot and harassed Fernando, the ship’s owner, and his wife– she just gets to be on the ship and enjoy a jolly holiday. Why isn’t she imprisoned in her cabin? The sisters still have her help them! This is literally insane!

Who wrote this? Why would you trust her?

So let’s move on to Eva (Ivana Baquero) and Nicolás Vázquez (Jon Kortajarena). So in the previous season, Nicolás was trying to get Eva to go out with him as he fell for her right away. They spent the whole last season sleuthing and Nicolás became the captain when Capitán Santiago Aguirre had to be pulled from duty. Nicolás has had a sad life of being an orphan turned thief, to being found and saved by Capitán Santiago Aguirre, married, fought in WWII, wife taken as she was part of the resistance, and then she passed away in a concentration camp giving birth. He finally found happiness again with Eva.

Now I LOVED them together! The two were like Tommy and Tuppence, and the best part of the series. I loved their chemistry and interactions.

So as I mentioned, Eva and Nicolás are an item, and all of us are so happy for them. Well…except for the writers who decide that Nicolás’ wife is alive after being declared dead for years-yes and after all he did to find her and couldn’t, she somehow managed to find the ship he is on and get to Brazil, preparing to meet him when he arrives. To make things even worse, Nicolás receives the telegram right after he and Eva sleep together.

Nicolás still loves Eva and wants to help her as he worries about her with all the crazy shenanigans on the Barbara de Braganza but she won’t have anything to do with him as he is a married man. On one hand, I’m like good for her to avoid him as being with him is just setting herself up for heartbreak. But on the other hand, I hate these two being separated SOO much. So yeah, they spend hardly any time together.
Eva spends most of the season alone more than anything and trying to find where her father disappeared (he escaped from being imprisoned) and investigating whether Cassandra the psychic is who she says she is, and also not talking to her sister.

Then we have beautiful, sweet Clara (Laura Prats) the singer. In the last season she was raped by Aníbal de Souza and when she threatened to tell on him, he attacked her. His wife, Natalia Fábregas (Fernando’s sister) helped fight him off (as he didn’t treat her any better) and killed him on accident. Instead of notifying the doctor, the wife convinced her to hide it and help her move the body to make it look like he was drunk and fell.

Clara is suffering a lot from this trauma and the guilt and Natalia is a horrible human being who doesn’t help. The ship detective, Varela, who has bumbled around the first season doing nothing-finally has his brain cells work figures it out and starts blackmailing Natalia. Clara finally tells her boyfriend Pierre what happened and he wants to support her but doesn’t know how. I actually thought it was well done as he wants to help but is utterly clueless. Pierre leans on Natalia as he wants to protect Clara, and she tangles him in her web as she starts to desire him. She puts the moves on him, and poor traumatized, lost little Clara sees it and it pushes her over the edge-and she commits suicide.

You precious cinnamon roll! You were too good for this world! I’m crying!

So in the last season Sebastian de la Cuesta, a rich playboy and friend of Fernando, and Verónica de García, (daughter of the Villanueve sister’s maid and their maid as well), got involved. They were hiding it from her mother, she pretending to be with the boy her mother liked-Sebastian’s valet Dimas Gómez. I love Dimas, but Veronica doesn’t. She and Sebastian are getting more serious, but Sebastian has a secret-he has no money. Dimas has a plan to create ethanol and just needs financial backing. He went to Sebastian for help, but Sebastian stole it and showed it to another friend who double-crossed him. Sebastian tries to win it back in poker but loses the plans and his family castle.

He proposes to Veronica who refuses him, and ends up going off with Dimas. I actually didn’t want them together as I think Dimas deserved better. He’s like Fanny Price, the person they longed for is not worth it.

So whodunnit? In the end the killer was their housekeeper and surrogate mother, Francisca de García. She found out that Fernando was going to run off and she didn’t want Carolina hurt. She went to talk to Rosa, who was such a nasty horrid girl who only cared about herself and was rude to Francisca. Francisca snapped and killed her.

Oh yeah, and the stowaway is just running about and hugely pregnant-when did that happen?

The stowaway escapes with the Nazi gold from season one, Nicolás runs off to a woman wearing a wide-brimmed hat (that’s right we don’t even get to see her), and the Villanueve sisters and Fernando get in a car and drive away. This journey is over, but another will start…next year.

It was horrid and I hated it. I would rather just go back and watch the first season again.

Although, they have sucked me in with Nicolás and his wife. As soon as that last episode ended, I knew I would be watching the next season as I had to know if Nicolás and Eva got back together.

Tell ME!!!!!

The only thing that didn’t disappoint this season? The clothes! I love 1940s fashion and I want nearly EVERYTHING they own.

For more High Seas/Alta Mar, go to We’re Stranded on a Ship in the Middle of the Ocean with a Killer!: High Seas (2019)

For more ghosts, go to An Insane Doctor, A Hysterical Herbalist, and Murder in a Magician’s Mansion + A Possible Persuasion Reference?

For more mysteries, go to Why Miss Fisher the Movie Flopped for Me: Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears (2020)

For more psychics, go to Every Twenty-Third Spring for Twenty Three Days, it Gets to Eat: Jeepers Creepers (2001)