Gleeful Gallic gems to be shown at the 'Oh La La!' Festival of French Comedy

Sometimes, there is nothing better than a breezy French comedy to banish the blues, and you can see both new and classic Gallic gems around the country at the Oh La La! Festival of French Comedy, beginning November 21. 

The films will play over different weekends, starting at the Sderot Cinematheque and Haifa Cinematheque on opening day. Haifa will feature these films on the weekend of November 28, and they will also be shown that weekend at the Ennis Auditorium in Jaffa. 

Louis de Funes is revered by many as the greatest French comedian of all time, and the festival will show one of his biggest hits, The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob, a slapstick classic from 1973 about a French bigot on the run from gangsters and police who impersonates a rabbi. Directed by Gerard Oury, the movie is built around a dozen or so comic set pieces, such as when the hero must do a traditional Jewish dance. 

The supporting cast is top-notch and includes Marcel Dalio (The Rules of the Game, To Have and Have Not) and Miou-Miou (Entre Nous). Much of the humor is politically incorrect by today’s standards, but that doesn’t make it less funny. The Tel Aviv Cinematheque will have a screening of The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob on November 28 and this beloved film will be shown in Haifa as well. 

It’s hard to understand the appeal of DNA testing – I don’t need to spend $40 to know I am 98% Ashkenazi Jewish – and Julien Herve, the director of Cocorico, the opening film in the festival, has put the concept of these tests to good use by using it as the basis for comedy. Chloe Coulloud is a young woman from an aristocratic family who becomes engaged to a commoner (Julian Pestel), whose father (Didier Bourdon) owns a car dealership.

To try to break the ice between their very different families, the young couple present their parents with DNA tests, which they think will be a fun way to find out about each other. If you’ve ever seen a comedy, you can guess what’s coming, and it turns out that no one is as French as they think they are. In addition to Bourdon, the film stars Christian Clavier as the aristocratic father, and Sylvie Testud and Marianne Denicourt as the mothers. 

French cinematic comedy

THERE IS a genre of comedy that could be called, “It’s never too late to make a fool of yourself,” and Ivan Calberac’s Never Confess (its French title is N’avoue Jamais) fits into this category. It tells the story of a retired military general (Andre Dussollier, who was in A Very Long Engagement), who goes crazy when he discovers that his wife (Sabine Azema, best known for Bertrand Tavernier’s A Sunday in the Country), cheated on him 40 years ago. The ex-general heads off to the French Riviera to track down her former lover (Thierry Lhermitte, whom you may recognize from Le Divorce and Le Diner de Cons).

Romain Choay and Maxime Govare’s ironically titled Lucky Winners is about how lottery winners find their lives spiraling in directions they never imagined following their windfalls, a premise similar to the Israeli series, Six Zeros, which aired last year. 

Bruno Podalydes’s A Small Vacation (aka La Petite Vadrouille) stars two of France’s biggest stars, Sandrine Kiberlain and Daniel Auteuil, who previously played opposite each other in The Other Woman as a couple with money problems who organize what is supposed to be a romantic cruise for a wealthy acquaintance. The prolific director has made such hits as The Sweet Escape and Versailles Rive-Gauche. 

Laurent Tirard was one of France’s top comedy directors for many years, helming such films as Moliere and Up with Love, but sadly he passed away earlier this fall. The festival will show his final film, Good Heavens! and it sounds like one of his best. 

Five nuns who decide they must win the top prize in bicycle race, which will give them the funds they need to renovate the hospice where they work. The only problem is that they can’t ride bikes and it turns out they aren’t even the only nuns in the race. It stars Valerie Bonneton and Sidse Babett Knudsen (Borgen).

Le Panache, directed by Jennifer Devoldere, is about a boy who has a stuttering problem and has trouble adjusting to a new school, until a charismatic teacher steps in to help. Aure Atika, who played Simone the sexy widow in Avi Nesher’s Turn Left at the End of the World, portrays the boy’s mother. 

Some of the films will be opening in theaters around Israel following the festival. The festival is being presented by Eden Cinema and New Cinema, and is sponsored by L’Occitane. Caroline Boneh arranged the festival programming. 

For the full program and to order tickets, go to the theaters’ websites.