MOVIE REVIEW 'Monsieur Ibrahim' is visually, emotionally lush

An abandoned teen's trip to Turkey with a kindly shop owner is the film's focus.
By MILAN PAURICH
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
Even though Francois Dupeyron has been writing and directing movies in his native France since the late 1970s, "Monsieur Ibrahim" is the first Dupeyron film to garner an American release. Never having seen any of the director's previous work, I'm not certain whether "Ibrahim" is a happy accident or just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. If the rest of his movies are this good, stateside audiences have been missing out on one of the French film industry's leading talents.
Set largely on the Rue Bleue, a cramped, scruffy boulevard in one of the more depressed regions of Paris, it's nearly as intoxicating and lushly romantic a depiction of 1960s Paris as Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Dreamers." The film -- an adaptation of Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt's well-regarded novel -- immediately transports us back to a time and place that seems almost utopian. "Why Can't We Live Together," that flower-child musical ode to multicultural brotherhood, floats across the opening and closing credits like a heady perfume.
Thirteen-year-old Momo (screen newcomer Pierre Boulanger in an exceptional debut performance), mature beyond his years, lives with his chronically depressed father (Gilbert Melki) in a dingy flat just above the Bleue. The boy's mother deserted them years ago, and Momo's cold, distant dad can barely contain the disgust he feels for the son who's a constant reminder of his ex-wife.
Sexual awakening
One of Momo's favorite pastimes is ogling the local prostitutes who ply their trade outside his bedroom window. Deciding that he's been a virgin long enough, the randy teen cracks open his piggy bank and uses it to finance a tryst with streetwalker Sylvie (Anne Suarez). Dupreyon's tact, delicacy and frankness in dealing with the usually taboo subject of underage sexuality immediately separates him from virtually any filmmaker -- certainly any American filmmaker -- alive. When Momo eventually transfers his romantic yearnings to a girl his own age, the outcome is far more traumatic.
A rare beacon of sunshine in young Momo's life is Monsieur Ibrahim (Omar Sharif, never better), the courteous Muslim gent who runs the neighborhood grocery store. He even becomes Momo's surrogate pop after his real father disappears, whisking him off on a dream vacation to Ibrahim's native Turkey.
Film's centerpiece
That trip becomes the emotional centerpiece of the film, and cinematographer Remy Chevrin makes it a visual feast as well. Ibrahim and Momo's voyage -- behind the wheel of the shiny red convertible Ibrahim bought just for this occasion -- is a fantastic sensory explosion of color; light; billowy clouds; and, in the pi & egrave;ce de r & eacute;sistance, a performance by Sufi whirling dervishes in a Turkish mosque.
Dupreyon doesn't make a huge deal out of Ibrahim and Momo's religious differences (Ibrahim is a devout Muslim who reads the Koran; Momo is a nonpracticing Jew), which is all for the better. This tough-minded, rigorously unsentimental humanist parable builds to an ending so perfect, yet so exquisitely understated, that you'll need to catch your breath while choking back tears.
XWrite Milan Paurich at milanpaurich@aol.com.