1999-01-29: Movie Review of "Soleil" |
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By Donald H. Harrison Titine Levy, portrayed by Sophia Loren in Roger Hanin's Soleil, is an impoverished Jewish mother, trying to raise five children in Vichy-dominated French Algeria during World War II. Her husband, working with false identity papers in France, sends her money whenever he can, but she must sell off her furniture, then resort to borrowing, cheating, even stealing, to feed her family in a society where Jews were fired from post office jobs like the one she held.
Besides being a story of life in times of privation, the French-language, English-subtitled Soleil (Sun) also is a charming coming-of-age story in which we see 13-year-old Meyer Levy (portrayed by Nicolas Olczyk) play street hockey; get arrested for painting communist slogans on a wall; faint the first time he kisses a girl; visit his first prostitute; and get drunk and silly with a friend shortly after being fired by an anti-Semite from a job at the fishmonger's. The film also hints at the complex relationship between Jews and Arabs in colonial Algeria. The Jews were higher up the social rung; but there were some true friendships between the two peoples--a fact that we often forget given the unremitting political warfare between Arab and Jew over the creation of the State of Israel. The photography is rich and so warm that one is tempted to wonder can the world really be so pretty in times of privation? Apparently when there is love--particularly the enduring, life-sustaining love of a mother for her children--it really can. "Soleil" will open the Feb. 16-25 San Diego Jewish Film Festival
when it is aired at 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 16, at the AMC La Jolla 12
Theatres. For ticket information, phone the Lawrence Family JCC at (619)
457-3030.
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