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.

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.

Overall I was bored while watching this movie. Several short stories make up the film and a couple of them were humorous. Most of them were heavy and somewhat dark. Dany Boon was terrific as always and Charlotte Gainsbourg was magnetic. I didn't really enjoy this movie but I was curious enough about what would happen that I watched through to the end.

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.

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.