Despite being an immensely personal film \u2013 Elmaleh\u2019s real parents and sister play his family in the film and most of the cast are people close to him \u2013 Stay With Us<\/i> will resonate with anyone who has questioned their purpose in life, or been curious about other religions and cultures. Elmaleh doesn\u2019t disparage religion or the religious. Thankfully, he chooses to tackle the subject seriously, with well-timed comedy, his own stand-up act as part of the story, as well as other natural-seeming, unforced funny moments \u2013 the reaction of his parents when they find a statue of the Virgin Mary in his suitcase is hilarious, for example.<\/p>\n
The movie Rose<\/i> is similarly satisfying \u2013 serious but also light and amusing. In the first minutes, set at Philippe\u2019s rocking, festive, friend-filled 80th birthday party, we learn that Rose and Philippe are still madly in love after decades of marriage, that their three adult children each have their own personal challenges and rivalries (between themselves and for their parents\u2019 affection), and that Philippe is fatally ill.<\/p>\n
Understandably, after Rose loses the love of her life, she grieves. Her children worry that she doesn\u2019t answer the phone, that she\u2019s not taking care of herself. When 78-year-old Rose does start to take care of herself, to focus on her needs, to rediscover herself after years of being a wife, mother and grandmother, her children worry even more.<\/p>\n Written by Aur\u00e9lie Saada and Ya\u00ebl Langmann, Rose<\/i> is a charming, heartwarming film about how we choose to experience life, its happy, sad and other moments \u2013 and how it\u2019s never too late to find joy. Saada is the film\u2019s director, and she also composed original music for the film, which has a notably wonderful soundtrack. The movie is infused with her Tunisian Jewish background.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was important for me to put my first film in this setting because I didn\u2019t want to cheat,\u201d Saada says in the press material. \u201cI wanted this film to resemble me and not to borrow anything from cultures that I hadn\u2019t sufficiently mastered. Also, Eastern Judaism is often caricatured in French cinema. I wanted to show its more complex face, far from the clich\u00e9s. But it remains a setting, a costume, a perfume because the heart of the subject is not there. This film may be imbued with Judeo-Eastern culture, but a friend of mine from Corsica, a Christian, told me a short while ago: \u2018It\u2019s crazy, it\u2019s like home.\u2019 I believe that we humans are much more alike than we imagine.\u201d<\/p>\n This notion pretty much encapsulates the film No Name Restaurant <\/i>as well. Written and directed by Stefan Sarazin and Peter Keller, the idea for the story apparently came from Sarazin\u2019s \u201cnumerous travels to the Middle East\u201d and was \u201cinspired by an abandoned boat in the desert and the friendship to an elderly Bedouin.\u201d<\/p>\n Ben, an ultra-Orthodox Jew from Brooklyn, has yet to marry. Within hours of arriving in Jerusalem, both to visit family but mostly to meet the matchmaker \u2013 who he purposefully misses by taking his time to get to his uncle\u2019s shop from the airport \u2013 Ben eagerly agrees to Uncle Yechiel\u2019s request to head right back to the airport to catch a flight to Egypt.<\/p>\n The Jewish community of Alexandria, the president of which is Yechiel\u2019s brother-in-law, needs a 10th man to form a minyan before Passover. If they can\u2019t observe the holiday, according to some written agreement, all the community\u2019s property and possessions will have to be turned over to the state.<\/p>\n Ben seizes the chance to save the ages-old synagogue, but misses his plane and then is kicked off the bus to Alexandria by fellow passengers, putting the whole plan in jeopardy. Luckily, he is picked up in the Sinai Desert by Adel, a Bedouin searching for his lost camel. Unluckily, Adel\u2019s truck breaks down and the two men must head out on foot. Short on water \u2013 much of which had been used by Ben for ritual handwashings along the way \u2013 and going only on Adel\u2019s memory of a well his family had frequented when he was a kid, the journey is fraught with existential concerns, including what other Arabs might do to a Jew in their midst and to the Bedouin who is helping him.<\/p>\n No Name Restaurant<\/i> is a buddy movie that delivers all that one would expect from such a movie and more. With respect and humour, it brings together Jews, Muslims and Christians in a novel way to optimistic effect.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n![\"image](\"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/mar-22-film.22.VJFF-Rose.png\")
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