At least as far back as l’affaire Dreyfus, French Jews have had a difficult time figuring out where they stood with their countrymen.
These days, with the climate as bad as it’s been in years, some are leaving for Israel, while others are adopting a low profile until better days arrive. The good news is that an extraordinary number of risk-defying French filmmakers are tackling the prickly issues of Jewish identity and anti-Semitism.
Karin Albou’s austere melodrama “La Petite Jerusalem” and Arthur Joffe’s poignant comedy “Local Call!” could not be further apart in tone and sensibility. But each provides insights and provokes emotions that news reports cannot.
“La Petite Jerusalem,” which is co-presented by the Interfaith Connection of the JCC of San Francisco, and “Local Call!” screen in the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.
The conundrum at the heart of “La Petite Jerusalem” is a university student besotted with philosophy. Laura has a black-and-white view, adhering to the certainty of pure reason and exclaiming defiantly, “I’m not giving in to primary emotions!”
Raised Orthodox, Laura nonetheless rejects her sister and brother-in-law’s unquestioning belief in God, not to mention her Tunisian mother’s superstitions. Does Laura aspire to some rarefied standard of absolute truth? Or is she hiding behind words and ideas, afraid to confront the physical reality of being a woman, and the passions churning inside her?
From home to school to the lower-middle-class suburb of Paris where she lives with her family, Laura fits everywhere and nowhere. Sooner or later, something’s got to give.
The director establishes a mood of vague foreboding and mystery from the opening frame that is intriguing, but occasionally a bit precious. It’s
the filmmaking, and not Laura’s circumstances, that generates most of the tension.
That said, the extraordinary level of ambiguity that “La Petite Jerusalem” embraces, along with its studious refusal to judge any of its characters, guarantees lengthy post-screening conversation.
Even more than the teenage Laura, the happily married, middle-aged hero of “Local Call!” thinks he has life all figured out. But everything goes haywire when he gives his late father’s overcoat to a homeless man.
Felix’s intentions are good, even though he’d have hung on to the garment forever — along with everything else in his cluttered home office — until his wife got fed up and started filling up garbage bags.
But it’s the coat that provokes Papa, up in heaven, to call Felix and demand that he get it back. Director Arthur Joffe pulls off the outlandish idea of deceased parents dialing their adult children so convincingly that you’re apt to be spooked the next time your phone rings.
Thankfully, this is not a Hollywood load of schmaltzy crap, like Adam Sandler’s savagely bad “Click,” about a grown son getting a second chance to right some wrong he did to his father. Rather, Papa’s secret scheme launches Felix on a rocky path to rediscovering his Jewishness.
As Felix, the marvelous Italian actor Sergio Castellitto boisterously drives the film, hitting a hundred notes from puzzlement to buffoonery to acerbic frustration to a kind of reverence. He is that rare comic actor who can retain his dignity in the midst of farce, which has the crucial effect here of keeping the film sufficiently tethered to reality that we accept — and are touched by — the unexpected conclusion of Felix’s quest.
While “La Petite Jerusalem” uses anti-Semitism as a kind of bogeyman to rather crude effect, “Last Call!” evokes both the troubled past and present of the Jews in France with poignancy rare in a comedy.
However, the behavior of non-Jews isn’t the main concern of either film, to be sure. These are stories about Jews taking responsibility for — and pride in — their Jewishness.
“La Petite Jerusalem” screens 7:15 p.m. Saturday, July 22 at the Castro Theatre in S.F., 8:30 p.m. Saturday, July 29 at the Century in Mountain View, 7:15 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 5 at the Roda Theatre in Berkeley and 6:30 p.m. Monday, Aug. 7 at the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael. “Local Call!” screens 10 p.m. Tuesday, July 25 at the Castro, 7:15 p.m. Sunday, July 30 at the Century, 9:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 5 at the Roda and 8:45 p.m. Monday, Aug. 7 at the Smith Rafael Film Center.