Que la lumière soit

By a fireside in a Gothic ruin sits an invisible God watching the world below on a television screen. Disparate images of war and dispossession intersect with images of religious observance. The television set implodes. The invisible God has existential problems. He's sometimes not quite sure whether he exists or not. However he does have a mission. He's working on a script which will bring humanity together. But will he be able to find the right director? Once upon a time he was in love with Joan of Arc. Her death still plagues his conscience. Is there a modern Joan of Arc somewhere down there who can bring his vision to the screen?

I first saw 'Let There Be Light' some years ago on SBS. When I went looking for it recently I found that there wasn't an English language version available on DVD, which seems a real shame. It's an immensely enjoyable film. It has a broad scope and works on many different levels. It's funny, thought provoking, beautifully paced and deftly put together. The music is bright and there are great moments of editing. Sure, it is a wildly preposterous premise and yes, I did watch it fearing that it might plummet. But actually I found it did the opposite.

At the heart of this film is a sense of gentle bemusement at the foibles of flailing humanity. This particularly shines through the heroine, played by Helene de Fougerolles. She is disarmingly unpretentious throughout and at times almost translucent. Tcheky Karyo does a suitably beguiling Mephistophelean character with relish and God in his many manifestations is a multifaceted wonder. At the end of the film there is a mirroring of that lonely image of God the writer which came at the beginning. Not a bad transformation for an old bloke.

This movie has an interesting premise, some good visuals, and a very nicely rendered message at the end; however, getting to this end was not a pleasant trip. In this film, getting from point A to point D sometimes entirely skipped points B and C. Nothing in it is too jarring, but overall I thought it could have been much better. Characters drift in and out of the picture with so much aimlessness that's it's very difficult to feel anything for them, which is at odds with the film's premise. On a side note, I felt the identity of the French studio chief was (unintentionally) very ironic.

Are we allowed to laugh when we talk about faith ? Not since the "Jesus laughs" (Jesus People) have we been allowed to laugh about matters of faith. This movie brings a fresh wind into our all to serious contact with metaphysics. Not only is the main actress a marvelous example of beauty allied to intelligence hitting the right tone in this movie but we have here a very bright rainbow shining down on us regarding the manifold aspects of faith. This magnificent comedy should be shown more often on our screens especially in a time where fundamentalism is coming back with all its followers of murder, hatred and death. "Que la lumière soit" ! Pure delight

P.s.: I am waiting for the DVD version coming out

God returns to earth to make a film. It sounds like a preposterous idea and based on this subject one might assume the film quirky, but I found it far too touching to label it so. There's something in humor and warm-heartedness of this film that holds it all together. The film takes the idea from an amusing thought, to a beautiful uplifting experience.

I laughed, I cried, I was truly touched by this beautiful film.

I have been searching on and off for this film for eight years. I finally found a DVD on amazon.fr but was sadly disappointed to discover that it had no English subtitles.

God appears as many forms in this film. This itself is a brilliant metaphor on several levels. Many films try to portray god with in different ways (deep voices coming from the sky etc.) but the way he is portrayed in "Que la lumière soit" is a disarming stroke of brilliance. Hélène de Fougerolles is amazing as Jeanne, she plays the role with such innocence... she is positively luminescent in this film. Poor, poor René, God's trusty assistant angel, what a gorgeous character!

Thank you to all involved for such a magical uplifting film.

I just managed to see this film again after looking for all these years, I'm sure there are many others who loved this film as I do. I wish someone would distribute this in Australia!

This film was just good fun, not-quite-two hours of entertaining suspension of disbelief--literally, since if one does not believe in God, or believes anything in particular about him, one has to forget that. Which is easy, because every little idea and character is worked out just enough to keep the viewer engaged: yes, the Hebrew typewriter (on which God is typing his screenplay--he is woefully underendowed with electronics and evidently doesn't even have cable, though there is a satellite in his neighborhood) goes to the right when God hits "return"; yes, God is a baby-ditchdigger-pigeon-garbage man; yes, some kind of wings will appear in the proximity of the angel René until he gets his "real" ones. The Burning Bush becomes a hot-dog roast, a woman who reads the newspaper tells God off for allowing the news to happen, the devil has his own rewrite department. There is some kind of dumb or clever joke, visual or verbal or both, every minute. Maybe every thirty seconds.

The movie God makes provokes the one long sequence with relatively few jokes: people watching a movie. It reminded me quite a bit--and was surely meant to--of the movie scene in Sullivan's Travels, with men at the lowest ebb of dignity laughing at Mickey Mouse. But this audience is not a chain gang; it is all the people of Paris, cushioned by a social safety net (at one point René says that if he gets fired as an angel he'll have to apply for unemployment; hospitals are evidently good places to die or go crazy; you need a permit to make a movie; the police always seem to be in place whether needed or not; the more dangerous bits of the Eiffel Tower are roped off). Perhaps if there is a message it is that a society is better at providing safety nets than God, but that he survives because our imaginations need him (or, in the movie, vice versa).