Reste un peu

I've been looking forward to watching 'Reste un peu', Gad Elmaleh's semi-documentary and semi-autobiographical film ever since I saw some interviews and debates on the francophone televisions on the occasion of its release on screens in France a few months ago. The French Film Festival has now given me the opportunity to see the film and my expectations have been largely confirmed. Gad Elmaleh tackles the conversion of a Jewish character to Christianity, one of the most delicate themes of cinema with Jewish subjects, a theme that carries a painful historical charge and which, if not approached with a deep understanding of the subject, with delicacy and humor can easily fall into melodrama, stereotypes and other forms of bad cinema. The subject is present in films like 'Fiddler on the Roof' by Norman Jewison or in some of Woody Allen's New York period films. In fact, it doesn't take much imagination to picture Gad Elmaleh, the film's hero, as a Woody some 40 years later, living out his dilemmas in a family of Sephardic rather then Ashkenazi Jews, in Paris' Marais instead of Manhattan.

Actor/Stand-up-ist Gad Elmaleh stars as actor/stand-up-ist Gad Elmaleh who returns to Paris to visit his parents after several years of trying his luck in America. The roles of the parents are played by Gad Elmaleh's parents (the father is a professional actor, the mother is not). The joy of the reunion and family harmony are disturbed by the mother's discovery, in her son's luggage, of a statuette of the Holy Virgin. The parents' worst fears are confirmed: their son is quite advanced on the path of conversion to Catholicism. It is not a typical conversion (are there typical conversions?) but on a Path strewn with many hesitations and doubts that seems to have been triggered from childhood by the ban on entering churches in the cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic Casablanca and by the fascination for Saint Mary. We will follow the winding spiritual path of the hero in the last weeks before the big event, a path sprinkled with discussions with relatives, friends, priests, monks and a nun, a rabbi and a rabbi woman. Almost all of them play the roles of their own characters, including the liberal rabbi Delphine Horvilleur, an impressing and charming figure in French Judaism. Gad's parents are formidable. The only role "played" is that of the Orthodox rabbi, entrusted to a documentary director friend. The impression is of authenticity and freshness.

How should we watch 'Reste un peu'? From a secular and relaxed perspective, it can be considered a pseudo-documentary with an autobiographical note and with a lot of irony mixed with tenderness towards the two beliefs between which the character oscillates. Criticisms of religious establishments are not systemic but anecdotal. However, those involved in one or another of the religions will find - if they look for - reasons to be upset. To create a film with such a theme without offending anyone is 'Mission impossible'. Like some of the Christian saints, Gad goes through a period of temptation, and how he will endure (or not) is interpreted very differently by the two faiths. Intentions are the best, and the hero of Gad Elmaleh's film faces temptation using detachment and humor as his main weapons. Filmgoers must resist the temptation to take the subject matter more seriously and humorlessly than the author did.

In this movie, which is a bit autobiographical, Gad Elmaleh casts his actual parents as his parents and the results are as fine as could be expected from any professional actors. (If I understand correctly, his father actually is a professional performer but his mother isn't.)

It's a very pleasant movie if you're willing to put aside any sensitivity you may feel to the topic of religious conversion. And to the idea that, deep down, the Abrahamic religions are more alike than different. And to the heavy emphasis on the Virgin Mary in the attitude of some Catholics. They're all embraced, and all made light of, in good humor although outside the theater the same issues may rub some of us the wrong way.