GOD IS GREAT,I’M NOT
A cinematic petit four.
In French, with English subtitles. Running time: 95 minutes. Not rated (language, sexual situations). At the Paris, 58th Street and Fifth and Sixth avenue.
THERE are worse ways to while away the hours than by watching the captivating Kewpie doll Audrey Tatou flutter her lashes and pout and preen against a Gallic cityscape in a variety of odd little old-fashioned outfits.
But there’s not much more to recommend director Pascale Bailly’s simplistic fluff-ball of whimsy.
Filmed before Tatou’s breakout role in “Amelie,” this gossamer-light romantic comedy makes the most of her enchanting screen presence, tucking plenty of close-ups into a narrative structure made choppy by its sequences of fade-outs and intertitles.
Tatou plays Michele, a nominally Catholic 20-year-old mannequin – she refers to herself as a “top model,” although she’s so petite this translates as a rueful joke – on a desperate quest for identity.
Vulnerable after a break-up with her boyfriend, an abortion and attempted suicide, she turns to God, then Buddha, then – after falling for a 32-year-old Jewish veterinarian named Francois (Edouard Baer) – becomes obsessed with Judaism.
The two bump heads as Michele, who has started learning Hebrew, increases the pressure on Francois to embrace his inner Jew, and provokes much consternation when she installs a mezuzah on the door of his apartment.
In a strained daub of Woody Allen neurosis, both Francois and Michele have baggage, a set each of messed-up parents.
As Michele struggles to become a fully realized human being, the film becomes a drawn-out will-they-or-won’t-they-end-up-together saga without resolution.