A Film a Week - A Good Jewish Boy / Le dernier des Juifs

 previously published on Cineuropa

The name Noé Debré might sound familiar, at least as one of the screenwriters on big-name films such as Jacques Audiard’s 2015 Cannes winner Dheepan and Tom McCarthy’s 2021 trans-Atlantic Matt Damon thriller vehicle Stillwater. After several directorial efforts in the short format, he has made a feature-length debut with A Good Jewish Boy. The film has already come out in France and Belgium and is scheduled for distribution in more territories, but it was shown in official competition at European Film Festival Palić.

Both the international and the original French titles (Le dernier des Juifs) stand for the film’s protagonist Ruben Bellisha (the up-and-coming actor Michael Zindel in a possibly career-making performance), a 20-something young man from the Parisian neighbourhood of Seine-Saint-Denis. He lives with his ailing mother Gisele (actress and filmmaker Agnès Jaoui, of The Taste of Others and Look at Me fame) and the two of them are the last Jews in their predominantly immigrant and Muslim neighbourhood. Unable to cope with the change of their surroundings and frightened with the development of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that threatens to spill over to the neighbourhood as well, Gisele wants her and her son to move out.

However, Bellisha is such a nice young man with such a boyish demeanour that he is beloved by the entire community, which nevertheless can't imagine that he could possibly have any agency over his own life. He secretly dates his married Arab neighbour Mira (Eva Huault) and keeps telling little white lies to his mother obsessed with kosher purity. He could try a number of career paths, such as following in the footsteps of his cousin Asher (Solal Bouloudnine) and become a successful travelling salesman, or move to Israel and join the army, or to Alsace where he could become a local synagogue caretaker, or even to stay behind and act like the “token Jew” for the municipality authorities. With Gisele getting weaker and weaker, his time to make a choice approaches.

For the comedy part, the film mostly relies on the actors to improvise and emphasise certain of their characters' traits, which sometimes goes slightly over the top, but not to the extent of harming the overall film. The use of Boris Lévy’s cinematography in typically Parisian amber tones suits the film well, while the varied music by Valentin Hadjadj is always played for a precise and clearly stated emotional effect, but its bursts are too short to actually become bothersome. Géraldine Mangenot’s editing also flatters everyone, keeping the pace engaging and the runtime compact at under 90 minutes.

Debré and his co-writer Élie Benchimol (also appearing on screen in the role of a YouTube rabbi) set the warm tone that balances comedy and drama early on, sometimes relying on the device of the off-screen narrator that adds some fairytale qualities to the film. They manage to maintain that balanced tone even later on, when the comedy of Bellisha’s endearing shenanigans wears out and the drama gets some darker and direr undertones, making A Good Jewish Boy a pleasant viewing experience and an efficient way to deliver a deeply humanist message. It might occasionally appear naive, just as its titular protagonist, but its warmth and humanism cannot be denied.