La Petite Jerusalem

Real-world events—such as young second-generation Muslim immigrants rioting in the streets of Paris (protesting what they see as government-sponsored discrimination), while some of the city's Jewish schools and synagogues are firebombed—form the spectral background for French writer-director Karin Albou's La Petite Jerusalem. But her focus is far more personal than political, putting a human face on the profound, never-ending conflicts between faith and passion, family duty and carnal desire, and the sensual versus the intellectual. La Petite Jerusalem is about two young women at odds with their religion, one suffocated by it and the other bent on defying it. Laura (played by the lovely Fanny Valette), who lives with her Sephardic Orthodox family in a Paris suburb known as Little Jerusalem, chafes under the strictures of orthodoxy, but she's no libertine—a devotee of secular philosophers such as Kant, Plato, and Aristophanes, Laura has decided that “passion is an illusion” and announces that she's “not giving in to primary emotions" (at least not until she meets Djamel, a handsome coworker who just happens to be Muslim). Meanwhile, older sister Mathilde (Elsa Zylberstein) is so bound by the rules of the Torah (which state, for example, that a man may not “spill his seed” for any purpose other than procreation) that her sexually-frustrated husband has found another lover. While the film contains some sexuality and nudity, Albou's style is subtle—the tentative intertwining of Laura and Djamel's fingers in a darkened subway car says as much here as any exaggerated heavy breathing or bodice-ripping scene could. Recommended. [Note: DVD extras include an interview with the director, a theatrical trailer, and a photo gallery. Bottom line: a small but solid extras package for a fine film.] (S. Graham)