Gisèle (Agnès Jaoui) no longer leaves her house.
From the balcony of her building at 9-3, the Jewish woman in her fifties who is desperate to continue eating kosher, while the entire community and shopkeepers have moved away, recognizes nothing: “What are there black people? !
Where have the Arabs gone?
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That’s how “The Last of the Jews”, by Noé Debré (author of the “Parliament” series): straightforward, true, funny and sweet at the same time.
A hilarious and poignant comedy carried by Michaël Zindel, the young actor who plays Gisèle's only son, Bellisha - his last name, but everyone in the city calls him that.
His black neighbors, but also his secret girlfriend who seems to be of North African origin… and above all married.
Clichés, move on.
Bellisha could pass for a child who refuses to grow up, but he works - sometimes -, he lives... Lunar, but solar.
“Michaël Zindel has a presence in the poetic world, like Chaplin, which allows us to embrace a difficult, perilous subject, this story of a young Jew from a working-class neighborhood,” greets Noé Debré, who discovered this young actor.
Before filming this comedy on the edge, which addresses racism at every moment in a very subtle way, by letting a tension rise which then comes down, by showing the solidarity which is woven without warning, the filmmaker documented himself extensively: “ Everything in the film was told to me.
I met many people, in synagogues and elsewhere, as an investigation.
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“Racism is commonplace, stupidity, and in hindsight it’s funny”
The feature film was shot in Noisy-le-Sec (Seine-Saint-Denis), never named: the director cares about this imaginary town, like a fable.
Bellisha, caught between his sick and lonely mother, his more than improbable affair, his precarious future, the erasure of the Jewish community in the town, dodges each obstacle with disarming tenderness.
Noé Debré takes on this very new tone for a social comedy.
“This film is made with love, not resentment.
Racism is commonplace, stupidity, and in hindsight it's funny.
This is one way to defuse it.
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Read also Hamas massacres: Agnès Jaoui refuses to “let herself be drawn into hatred”
“The Last of the Jews” was caught up in the news, after the massacres of October 7 in Israel and the war unleashed in Gaza.
A postponement of its release was considered.
Agnès Jaoui fought to maintain the planned date, just like Noé Debré.
“This is the tone and the discourse that we want to defend today.
Like a comic commentary on a situation that is not,” insists the latter.
And a form of “relief”, as he says.
On the way out, we laughed, smiled, were sometimes afraid, but a tension was released.
Is it so difficult to live together?
The Bellisha philosophy — “my neighbor is my neighbor” and “fear not” — opens the chakras.
A Zen clown in the city.
Editor's note:
4/5
“The Last of the Jews”,
French dramatic comedy by Noé Debré, with Michaël Zindel and Agnès Jaoui (1h30).