Mauvaise foi (2006) - film review

Clara and Ismaël are a happy couple, and when Clara discovers she is pregnant they are overjoyed.  But their elation is short-lived.  Just how are they going to break the news to their parents?  Clara is a Jew. Ismaël is a Moslem.  Their parents do not even know that they are in a relationship.  Just how will they react when they discover Clara is expecting a baby...?

For his first film as a director, Roschdy Zem takes on the weighty subject of racial tolerance and, despite some evident first-time nerves, he delivers a film that is both good-natured and true to life.  One of French cinema’s best-known and most highly regarded actors, Zem has so far graced over fifty films, many with a contemporary racial theme.  Mauvaise foi offers a sobering reminder that racism is still very much present in our seemingly colour-blind society - indeed racial prejudice is something which afflicts us all, something that is built into our DNA.  What it is particularly interesting about this film is that the greater threat to the relationship of a mixed couple is not how others perceive them, but how they imagine others perceive them.  Learning to understand the causes of racial intolerance is halfway towards resolving the problems of racism.  The film may at first appear somewhat superficial, but it contains some important messages for our time.

Zem’s inexperience as a director is evident throughout the film.  His direction is pretty uninspired and at times the film resembles a low-grade soap opera.  His screenplay (co-written with another distinguished actor, Pascal Elbé) is also marred by first film nervousness and is just a little too wary of causing offence.  Fortunately, these weakness on the directing and writing fronts are effectively masked by the contributions from the superlative cast.  Zem is effectively partnered with Cécile De France, a gifted actress who provides the film with its most intense and poignant moments - it is the sincerity that she brings to her scenes that most lifts the film and gives it the edge it badly needs.  The talented supporting cast includes Jean-Pierre Cassel (magnificent in one of his last screen roles) and an instantly likeable Pascal Elbé.   If only the writing had matched the quality of the acting, Mauvaise foi would have been an exceptional piece of film drama.

Occasionally, Zem overcomes his crippling timidity and slips in a few politically incorrect asides, but these are disappointingly few and far between and the film could have benefited from a few more excursions into naughty irreverence, if only to drive home the absurdity of racial intolerance.  Mauvaise foi is a film that is unlikely to offend anyone, but it would undoubtedly have had much greater impact if its writer-director had been willing to take a few more risks.  As it is, the film is disappointingly tame and anodyne, although it still manages to get across its central point, which is that we should never give in to racial prejudice.  Life is just too short.

© James Travers 2012

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