Monsieur Ibrahim: Movie, DVD Review (2009)

Directed by Francois Dupeyron, written by Dupeyron and Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, 95 minutes, rated R. In French with English subtitles.

The coming-of-age movie, “Monsieur Ibrahim,” is set in Paris during the early 1960s.

This isn’t the romanticized Paris of the 1964 Audrey Hepburn movie, “Paris When it Sizzles,” the 1951 movie “An American in Paris,” nor is it the tourist-friendly Paris depicted in postcards, where the River Seine stretches lazily around the Left Bank to Notre Dame and beyond.

This is, shall we say, the Paris Hilton version of Paris.

The film takes place in a bustling red light district called Rue Bleue. There, bewigged prostitutes in high heels and polka dot dresses roam the neighborhood streets in full pluck, sporting the sort of savoir faire hustle that would stop traffic in America, but which in France, only has the power to engage a teenage boy’s eye.

The boy in question is 16-year-old Momo (Pierre Boulanger), a Jewish teen abandoned by his mother who is now being raised by his distant father (Gilbert Melki). When Momo takes his life savings in coins to the local grocer, Monsieur Ibrahim (Omar Sharif), with whom he comes to form a close friendship, he exchanges them for francs, convinces one of the girls to have sex with him, and his new life as a young man begins.

Well, at least sexually.

The film, which Francois Dupeyron based on a screenplay by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, is funny and sweet, intentionally recalling the works of directors François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette and Eric Rohmer in that it feels almost unscripted, occasionally improvised, with its story branching off into unexpected directions as Dupeyron embraces an air of spontaneity.

At the film’s center is the relationship between Ibrahim and Momo, with Ibrahim imparting the wisdom he has learned from age and from his Koran. Ibrahim is at the end of his life, but Momo, who darts through the busy Parisian streets like a young Gene Kelly, is so filled with the promise of new experiences in spite of his troubled homelike, that he gives the old man a lift and a purpose.

The bond that forms between them is natural and unhurried. Both actors are terrific together, with Boulanger, a remarkable talent, easily holding his own opposite the accomplished Sharif.
Fittingly, the movie is set during the very period Sharif realized his greatest screen triumphs, all shot in the 1960s: “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Doctor Zhivago,” “Funny Girl.” Not surprisingly, he’s at home in the era, though what he brings to “Monsieur Ibrahim” isn’t the renegade intensity that once ignited his youth. Instead, it’s a resigned sense of completion, which the film recognizes toward the end as it turns into a road movie, with each character meeting themselves along the way.

Grade: B+

View the trailer here: