On a rainy afternoon in England, Mr. Bean is delighted to win First Prize in his local church raffle; a week’s holiday in the South of France, and a brand new video camera. He will stay in Cannes, at the height of its famous film festival.
He catches the Eurostar to Paris, filming everything with his new video camera. At the Gare de Lyons, he asks another passenger to film him as he boards the train for Cannes. The man is Russian film director Emil Duchesvsky, who is travelling to Cannes to be a judge at the Film Festival. Emil obliges, but in the confusion of filming, Emil gets left on the platform as the train pulls out.
Mr. Bean is heading South when he realises that Emil’s son Stepan, aged 10, is on the train without his father. Neither speak each other’s language.
Mr. Bean and Stepan get off at the next station to wait for Emil, but the next train is an express and Emil is whisked on to Cannes. When Mr. Bean and Stepan board the next train, Mr. Bean leaves his money, his ticket and passport on the platform. They are thrown off for not having tickets, and left lost and penniless in France.
Stepan’s father Emil reports Mr. Bean to the police and a national manhunt is launched, to find his son.
Stepan and Mr. Bean strike up an unlikely friendship. Stepan is quick-witted and resourceful; they work well together, and soon earn enough money busking to catch a bus South to Cannes. Except that Mr. Bean’s ticket somehow gets stuck on the foot of a chicken and he misses the bus…
Without Stepan, and lost in the vast French countryside, Mr. Bean hitches his way South. At night he wanders into a village and falls asleep under a haycart. The next morning, he wakes to find himself in what seems to be a perfect French village, but is in fact the set of a yoghurt commercial. The director is American film maker and narcissist, Carson Clay, who is earning some cash before travelling South to attend the Cannes Film premiere of his navel-gazing art house cop movie, Playback Time.
Mr. Bean hitches a lift south with bit-part actress Sabine, who played a waitress in the yoghurt commercial, and is going to Cannes to attend the premiere of Playback Time, in which she has a small role. When Bean is reunited with Stepan at a motorway service station, all three of them drive south through the night.
Arriving in Cannes, they see a TV newsflash: Mr. Bean is a wanted man, and the whole of France is looking for him and Stepan. There are roadblocks ahead. They have to get past them to the premiere of Playback Time, and return Stepan to his father, without Bean being arrested.
Disguised as Sabine’s mother and daughter, Mr. Bean and Stepan successfully pass through the roadblocks, but with only one ticket between, only Sabine is allowed into the premiere.
Bean and Stepan sneak in round the back. Playback Time is boring the audience to tears. Leaving Stepan behind the screen, Bean tries to attract Emil’s attention without alerting the guards. When Sabine’s only scene is cut, Bean decides to help her. Hiding in the projection room from the guards, he begins to project his video footage on to the big screen, to reinsert Sabine into the film.
The combination of film and video catches the audience’s attention for the first time, but Carson Clay is apoplectic with rage. He and the guards break into the projection room to stop Mr. Bean, but he escapes. Walking over the heads of the audience, he reaches the stage just as Stepan appears from under the big screen. The crowd erupts into applause.
Carson Clay’s Playback Time is hailed as a groundbreaking classic, Sabine is feted as a star and Stepan is returned to his delighted mother and father.
And Mr. Bean?
He slips away from the scenes of celebration to the beach. At the water’s edge, he rolls up his trousers and smiles: at last his holiday can begin.
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