Monsieur Ibrahim Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)February 13th, 2004
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There's something to admire about a film that opens with a 16-year-old kid bashing open his piggy bank to scoop out money for a quick tryst with a hooker. Sadly, that's the high point in Monsieur Ibrahim, a pretty, well-meaning film that's merely another entry in the unnecessarily crowded field of Old Guy Befriends Young Boy and Teaches Him About Life movies.
Ibrahim is set in early 1960s Paris, in a neighborhood home to both a Jewish enclave and, apparently, the city's prostitution district. The 16-year-old mentioned above is Moses (Pierre Boulanger), a sexually frustrated teenager who shares an apartment with his miserable father (Gilbert Melki). Mom disappeared when Moses was a little kid, and when his dad bothers to open his mouth, all that pours out are digs about Moses not being able to measure up to an older brother we never see.
Moses is in charge of the grocery shopping, and once he discovers cutting a few corners with purchases will leave him with more hooker funds, he starts to shoplift from an area convenience store owned by the titular Turk (César nominee Omar Sharif). Instead of getting mad and calling the cops, Ibrahim, for some reason, helps Moses steal from him. He also dispenses sappy bits of wisdom like a fortune cookie factory, as well as teaches Moses lessons from the Koran. It's cute and unusual to see the two able to overcome their differences (age and religion), but it's nothing new. And in the third act, things really start to fall apart.
There's a bit more going on than just the Moses-Ibrahim relationship, including Moses's Charlie Brownish infatuation with a redheaded neighborhood girl he thinks is way out of his league and the production of a feature film which enables our two protagonists to briefly interact with a Brigitte Bardot-type star (a fairly unrecognizably blonde Isabelle Adjani). But mostly it's just more of what you've already seen in better films. Sharif's performance - his first lead role in a film since the Nixon administration - is strong, but not enough to make me able to recommend viewing. Directed by François Dupeyron, who adapted Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt novella.
1:34 - R for some sexual content
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