Pour Sacha (1991)

Pour Sacha is a French film first released in 1991, directed by Alexandre Arcady.  The film stars Sophie Marceau, Richard Berry, Fabien Orcier, Niels Dubost and Frédéric Quiring.  It has also been released under the title: For Sasha.  Our overall rating for this film is: good.


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I’ve just seen again Pour Sacha on cable TV. It is really a very good film, and its director, Alexandre Arcady is one of the few French film-makers (with Claude Lelouch) able to mix romance and an historical background. In this case, it’s the June 1967 war between Israel and the neighbouring Arab countries. It’s in fact the event which aggravated the situation in the Middle East, as the victorious Israeli army conquered part of the Palestinian territories. The situation has been blocked ever since.

Curiously, Alexandre Arcady – who also directed an excellent gangster movie, called Le grand Pardon (1981) – has never been recognized as a serious film-maker by the critics and the intelligentsia. His latest films – Mariage mixte, Tu peux garder un secret? - were in fact less ambitious and less successful. So Arcady appears now more as a "has been" personality in the French film world.

The war scenes in Pour Sacha are very convincing, and the whole film has a very sincere and true quality. As far as the Palestinian-Israeli relations are concerned, there are two magnificent scenes, when an Israeli Arab – Wallid - receives at home the young French Jews visiting Israel. His wife offers Laura (the main character, played by Sophie Marceau) her wedding dress... Later on in the film, after the war has begun, Wallid is not allowed, by Israeli soldiers, to move beyond a certain checkpoint. His Israeli friend, Nissim, is very sad and tells him: "Don’t worry Wallid, we’ll talk after the war..." Pour Sacha (1991) is certainly not outmoded almost 20 years later, because, sadly, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is still unresolved. 4 stars.

© Georges Cohen 2008, Paris, France

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