Ils sont partout

I thought this was intelligently made for a comedy, most of them today being full of many cliches and over acting for easy laughs.

I don't see many French/Euro comedies but for comparison I liked this more than Look Who's Back, the German film about Hitler. The acting and directing are not as obvious as that film.

Most of the cast, between 7-10 of them, put on a good performance. They also manage to avoid the Annoyance Factor with movies about 'us minorities' and how everyone misjudges us. This is clever in that regard because most film makers do that terribly and attract the ire of a mainly right wing crowd who wince at the political correctness.

Yvan Attal must be commended because this isn't PC; it goes into the depths of irrational thinking about 'background' without hitting people over the head with the anti-semetism diatribe. But it is primarily quite a hilarious movie.

Although it's about Jews, the satirical presentation makes any maligned group ask themselves the same question. Why do they hate us? Whether it's a redhead, a tribe, a race, you name it. If you begin to dwell on the prejudice and suffering, you will always see the 'enemy' of your group wherever you go. They are everywhere. I see some negative reviews and wonder why. I found this movie quite deep. Maybe I am shallow.

Yvan (Yvan Attal) is French, atheist and lots of other things as he describes himself to his councillor in the opening scene... including being a Jew. He also wrote and directed this. Being Jewish and not religious, not bound at the heart to Israel, not fluent in Hebrew seems to confuse a baffling amount of people. Yvan finds this and does what many Jews do, which is not hide his jewish identity, but doesn't broadcast it either... until he made this film. Being Jewish bizarrely seems to hold a stigma still in some countries... certainly in France. Anyway Yvan is a remote narrator in this tale. He's talking to his counsellor and their sessions hypothesise on a number of Jewish stereotypes, each depicted by a short vignette. So we get the far right politician and her downtrodden husband who discovers he's Jewish on his grandmother's death bed and starts checking the size of his nose, only to realise he's now got the perfect ammunition to get back at his wife. Then there's the divorced woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg), cursing her ex for being the only poor Jew, making him think there's been a mistake and he can't possibly be Jewish until his dad wins the lottery and everyone starts chasing the money. Conspiracies that Jews only help one another, rule the world etc. The usual antisemitic crap. The problem here is it's supposed to be inventive, insightful satirical and funny... it's not. Not even the time travelling Mossad hitman mistaken for The Messiah on a mission to kill Jesus, that falls in love with Mary. Or the chaos started when a ginger guy annoyed that Jews get sympathy for the Holocaust starts a movement to promote the suffering of redheads. Or a referendum to make France a Jewish state and convert all citizens. I guess the idea is to mock the stereotypes, but because it's so cold and uninspired it really doesn't achieve that. I'd hate to think it fuels further antisemitism. It's thankfully too crap for that, but it's seems like a vanity project that's really missed the target.

I thought this was a great film. I do emphatically disagree that one needs to be Jewish to appreciate the film. In fact the same types of stereotypes exist against minority communities everywhere. One could make this film about Greeks in Turkey, Israeli stereotypes against Palestinians living in Israel, Koreans living in Japan and scores and scores of other examples.

One of those rare find, you know browsing stuff to watch and baam there you are. Ils sont partous or The Jews is an extremely good movie to watch, illustrating the grating lives of Jewish people while weaving dark humour in it and at the same time maintaining coherence in the plot. Not one boring moment in it.