Ils sont partout

Ils Sont Partout is quite an entertaining movie. I don't watch a lot of French cinema but I watch it enough to recognize some of the actress/actors in this film.

I would understand, this film might be more interesting (and funnier) if you're Jewish. As a Muslim, living in the anti-Jewish Muslim world, this film explains to me the culture, the tradition and the struggle of the Jewish community faced, and it been laid out brilliantly.

I could not finish it at one shot watching it. I have to continue the next day because it is quite long, but this film is brilliant if you are into short film or if you want to learn other culture.

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.

Excellent understated sense of humour. Couldn't stop rolling from laughter. Not sure whether I would have enjoyed it as much if I had watched it in a proper movie theater. However watching it on cable in the comfort of my living room was definitely a winner. Some of the creative ideas in the script are so mad that I need to hold back with great effort from describing them here, to avoid including spoilers in this review

This film is a must watch if you're Jewish and growing increasingly fed up with the growing levels of antisemitism across the west. I can only imagine its relatively poor score on this site is down to the fact that most reviewers don't fall into that category.

Because this film is funny - hilarious in fact. I was crying with laughter in places. But it may only be funny if you're Jewish and recognise the stereotypes, both in the sketches and in the main character, a Jewish man seeking therapy for being obsessed with the Jews and anti-semitism.

Excerpts from his therapy sessions are interspersed with what are essentially short stories, each one revolving around a Jewish stereotype and featuring a cast of characters who don't reappear. There's the Jew who wonders why he isn't rich when all the others are; the Nazi who belatedly discovers that he is a Jew; two Jews arguing over increasingly outlandish hypotheticals relating to chimney sweeps. The oddest short story involves a Mossad agent who travels back in time to kill Jesus, proving once again that in French cinema, literally anything can happen.

At times it's quite poignant and thought provoking, the director has been clever enough not to go just for laughs all the time, the result being that when they do come, they act as much as comic relief as mere entertainment. Which is precisely what we Jews need in this day and age, isn't it? A bit of comic relief.