Film: A sentimental education

By Jeannette Catsoulis

Omar Sharif is now 71, and with the release of Monsieur Ibrahim, film critics are busily dusting off a phrase that, after his death, may never again appear in print: Egypt's #1 movie star. Truth be told, before that iconic, silent entrance in Lawrence of Arabia, it's a phrase none of us could have foreseen using at all.

The description, however, is surprisingly apt. Sharif has never been a great actor--what he is is a great presence. The burning gaze, the leonine sweep of hair, the matinée-idol bones and generous mouth have always been more Valentino than Von Sydow. Yet now that the hair has turned white, the bones softened, and a decidedly un-sheikh-like belly (less obvious in his recent turn as Hidalgo's Sheikh Riyadh) lurks beneath his trademark puffy shirts, Sharif has--for this film, at least--ceased playing to his own own myth and relaxed into a performer of warmth and generosity.

In Monsieur Ibrahim, Sharif plays the title role of a Turkish shopkeeper on the Rue Bleue, a narrow street in a working-class, Jewish section of 1960s Paris. Everyone knows "the Arab's store," as it's incorrectly dubbed by locals concerned more with opening hours than ethnic accuracy. Ibrahim is the kind of man who dispenses twinkling nuggets of wisdom along with the sugar, mostly drawn from his own, highly personalized version of the Koran. He also doesn't mind too much when young Mo•se (Pierre Boulanger), a rangy neighborhood kid, steals his merchandise. "Better you should steal from me than somewhere you could get in real trouble," he shrugs, renaming the boy Momo.

Momo badly needs a friend. With an absent mother (dead or disappeared, the film is unclear) and a cantankerous, depressed father (Gilbert Melki), Momo is facing his 13th birthday with no hope of a bar mitzvah. His fondest dream is to purchase an evening with Sylvie (Anne Suarez), one of the colorful prostitutes who stroll the street outside his window, but his journey toward manhood lacks a guide. Recognizing the boy's loneliness, Ibrahim becomes both surrogate father and spiritual adviser--the wise Muslim counseling the confused Jewish boy on everything from proper footwear to the most effective way to pick up hookers (with a smile, apparently). Somehow it's no surprise when the old hit "Why Can't We Live Together?" kicks up on the soundtrack.

Essentially a fable on tolerance, both religious and generational, Monsieur Ibrahim is a pleasant, sweet-natured film too fragile and whimsical to carry the philosophical baggage director Franãois Dupeyron has loaded on board. Adapted from a novel by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, the movie paints a bleak--and stereotypically miserly--picture of Jewish life while presenting Eastern religion as the repository of wisdom and harmony. Like Yoda, Ibrahim has all the answers; but as the movie abruptly switches gears in its fantastical final third, the delicate structure so carefully put in place is all but destroyed.

Until then, there is much to enjoy in the film's vibrant depiction of an arrondissement alive with happy teens and transistor radios, chic whores in polka-dot dresses and a visiting Brigitte Bardot (lusciously played by Isabelle Adjani) in a cherry-red sports car. And if you're not in the mood for a lecture on open-mindedness, you can enjoy Sharif's sly humor and the charge given to his lines by our knowledge of his legendary playboy lifestyle. So when Ibrahim tells Momo, "It's good to start with professionals, but you'll soon appreciate novices," you just know he's speaking from experience. When it comes to sex, we're all brothers under the skin.