L'orchestre de minuit

Michaël Bitbol left his native Morocco long ago. Thirty years later he returns at the request of his father, who has become a virtual stranger to him. In any case, he has no memory of the glorious time when Marcel was a famous Andalusian musician and director of the Orchestre de Minuit. Unfortunately, the reunion is short-lived: Marcel dies suddenly. Michaël then undertakes to repatriate his body. It is on this occasion that he meets Ali, a cab driver and absolute fan of his father. Ali introduces him to several members of the Orchestre de Minuit.

A serious and little examined subject (the forced departure of the Jewish community from Morocco following the Yom Kippur war), this is what predisposes in favor of this film. Unfortunately, the direction is not up to the task, to say the least. Jérôme Cohen-Olivar, whose sincerity is not in doubt, even succeeds in checking off all the wrong boxes: a messy production, extremely naive flashbacks, a whining self-pitying tone, clumsy and repetitive humor, heavy-handed acting (with the exception of Gad Elmaleh), the worst being Aziz Dades, who horribly overplays. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, it cannot be repeated often enough.

Successfully wealthy in finance, Michael Abitbol has lived in the U.S. and not seen his father for some years when he returns to his native Morocco at his father's bidding. The family had fled Casablanca in 1973 when racial tensions rose as a result of the Yom Kippur War. Michael has to unravel at least two mysteries from his childhood: why his father abandoned a budding career and his band, and what happened to the other young musicians who played in that band. With a comical Arab cab driver as his guide, Michael searches for the surviving members of his father's combo, whose lives have diverged in wild and some not-so-lovely ways. Music, ghosts, and intercultural misunderstandings spice this often funny, sometimes menacing tale.