A Good Jewish Boy review: ‘elegiac paean to a fading community’

This first feature by director and co-writer Noé Debré could so easily have ended up as a kosher kitchen sink drama. But what emerges is a whimsical comedy in which Ruben attempts to protect his mother from her own anxieties with white lies about the vibrancy of the Jewish community.

Zindel is superb as the feckless yet oddly capable Ruben. In their living room he fakes his attendance to Krav Maga classes with ridiculous self-defence moves. His superpower is being liked even by the Muslim gang in his block who make it their business to avenge Ruben and his mother after they are burgled.

A scene from A Good Jewish Boy ©Simon Birman, Moonshaker Films[Missing Credit]

Set largely in and around the high-rise estates in which Ruben has lived all his life, his mother talks constantly of moving to a more Jew-friendly neighbourhood. Inertia wins.

Michael Zindel and Agnès Jaoui ©Moonshaker Films[Missing Credit]

A sense builds of a subtle elegiac hymn to a fading community, but one that is punctuated with the lightest of Jewish humour. To reassure her son that the power of prayer can keep her alive for a good while yet, Giselle tells him how she prayed for his dying father to live another year and against all the doctors’ predictions he did. “Shame you didn’t ask for longer,” says Ruben. A gem.

The 27^th UK Jewish Film Festival takes place 7-17 November 2024 in cinemas across the UK https://ukjewishfilm.org/