Monsieur Ibrahim

Starring:Omar Sharif, Pierre Boulanger, Gilbert Melki, Isabelle Renauld, Lola Naymark, Anne Suarez, Mata Gabin, CÃ©line Samie, Isabelle Adjani, Guillaume Gallienne, Guillaume Rannou, Manuel Le LiÃ¨vre, Daniel Znyk, FranÃ§oise Armelle, Sylvie Herbert, Claude Merlin, Pascal Vincent, Tessa Volkine, Marie-Sophie Ahmadi, Maryse Deol
Director: FranÃ§ois Dupeyron
Studio: Sony Pictures
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

Some crowded Parisian atmosphere and the burnished presence of Omar Sharif make this coming-of-age tale a pleasure. It's the early 1960s, and an adolescent Jewish boy (Pierre Boulanger), mostly left to his own devices by an ineffectual father, makes friends with the worldly wise Persian man (Sharif) who runs a small neighborhood grocery. The kid's fumbling experiences with sexual curiosity are the reliable stuff of many a French movie, but the unlikely friendship of young Jew and old Muslim make for an offbeat through-line. Francois Dupeyron's film shifts gears in its final section, moving from its flavorful location and into the wide-open spaces, and it goes on too long with too many pieces of advice. But overall this is a warm and winning experience, with Omar Sharif holding an instructive class in the power of understated movie-star charisma. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews:

I definitely recommend it........2007-06-10

I've always had a bit of resistance to watching foreign films, but this one was so much fun it didn't matter it was in a different language. The opening scene starts with a 16 year old Parisian boy breaking his piggy bank to have his first experience with a prostitute... and it goes on from there. It ends up being a sweet film about an unusual friendship between the boy and the old man who owns the local grocery store. It's a very enjoyable film, with well executed cinematography. I definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a lively fun movie to watch.

C'est un film qui est vraiment super!!!!.......2007-05-27

I first saw this film when it first came out. Years later, when I became a French teacher, I knew I had to purchase it either to show my students in class or at a French Club meeting at a public New York City high school. I have certainly got my money's worth and great pleasure from the film by showing it over and over again. The kids adore Moises for his imperfections, his wit and his loveable charm and personality. They revere Ibrahim for his ability to love Moises unconditionally and teach him self worth. Many would love to adopt him as one of their own relatives and role models. To find out for sure if this movie is suited to your liking, just scroll down and read Lisa D's review. Lisa was a former student of mine several years ago, a published writer, and she really knew how to get to the core of this sensational movie when putting it into words for a class assignment. Monsieur Ibrahim is probably my favorite movie to be found in my extensive French movie collection.

Blinded by Sharif's smile.......2007-03-07

Many reviewers seem to rate Monsieur Ibrahim highly because of Omar Sharif's smiling presence. This has caused them to overlook, however, the film's canyon-sized plot holes and overarching sentimentality.

I agree that the film has its good points: the scenery (Parisian street scenes and apartments, the Turkish countryside), the music and, to a lesser degree, Sharif's performance (when it avoids ladling on the syrup). And certain individual scenes work well.

Now for the questions:
Who is the father, and why is he such a miserable human being?
Why did the mother leave? More important, why does she briefly come back?
Is there a brother, or not?
Is there a Holocaust angle? If not, why? Or why keep it completely oblique?
From what planet were the beautiful, sweet, happy prostitutes imported?
Does the boy have no peers to rely on (or be corrupted by)?
Should a lonely old shopkeeper be thought of as the best and only source of wisdom for a 16-year-old boy?
Even if that wisdom doesn't rise above the level of what Forrest Gump would say?
If this is supposed to be the early 1960s, why did the word "Algeria" not come up in conversation?

For some, these questions will be irrelevant, however, given the chance to see an aging Omar Sharif on the screen. For others, beware.

crossing borders of age and ethnicity.......2007-01-25

Shot in 1960s Paris, Omar Sharif, now in his seventies, plays an elderly Muslim shopkeeper who befriends the teenage Jewish boy Momo who has been bereft of any meaningful relationship with his father.

Man and boy . . ........2006-08-05

Set in 1960s Paris, this film begins as a coming of age story and evolves into a road movie. Its central characters are a 16-year-old boy, living alone with a despondent and emotionally distant father, and an ageing proprietor of a small neighborhood grocery. Although the boy is Jewish and the old man Muslim, they form a friendship that begins to fill the loneliness in each other's lives. The boy, eager to become a man in the only way he knows how, by practicing pick-up lines in the mirror and having his first experiences with the women who work the street outside his window, also develops a romantic attachment to a girl who lives downstairs.

Meanwhile, the old man tries to teach him the values of simple humanity that he has learned from a lifetime of reading and studying his Koran. And as he slowly wins the boy's trust, the two of them journey by car to the old man's home in Turkey, where the boy learns more of what is required of becoming a man.

Brightly colorful, with a soundtrack of 1960s jazz and pop songs, the film is a loving recreation of a time and place. The young actor Pierre Boulanger is charmingly at ease in front of the camera and fully believable. Omar Sharif, of course, is wonderful, and there is a cameo appearance as a Bardot-style movie star by Isabelle Adjani. The DVD includes a commentary by Sharif.

Average customer rating:

Monsieur Ibrahim (French ONLY Version)

ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Art House & International | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Foreign & International | Stores | DVD | Video
ASIN: B00092ZTFK

Product Description

During the early 1960s, Paris was an explosion of life. As the old gave way to the new, everything was in flux and the city was filled with an energy that promised cultural shifts and social change. Against this backgound, in a working class neighborhood, two unlikely characters--a young Jew and an elderly Muslim--begin a friendship. When we meet Moise, also known as Momo, he is in effect an orphan even tough he lives with his failed father; he is more drawn to the local prostitutes who treat him with genuine affection. Momo buys his groceries at the neighborhood shop, a crowded dark space owned and run by Ibrahim, a silent exotic looking man who sees and knows more than he lets on, telling Momo that he "knows what is in his Koran". After Momo is abandoned by his father, Ibrahim becomes the one grownup in Momo's life. Together they begin a journey that will change their lives forever.

Monsieur Ibrahim (French Version With English Subtitles)

Average customer rating:

An unforgettable journey!

Monsieur Ibrahim (French Version With English Subtitles)

ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

The Chorus (Les Choristes)

ASIN: B0007CG1PE

Product Description

Customer Reviews:

An unforgettable journey! .......2006-10-08

Early sixties. In the middle of an urban and cosmopolitan Paris, under the quotidian stridence, there is modern Jew ghetto. We will witness about a lonely father and his little son; we also notice the figure of the mother is absolutely absent. This man is really absorbed in his thoughts in other ideas and the communication with his son is not even bad; it's inexistent. But at the same time the presence of a kind seller of Arab origin, who attends a small grocery store, will exert the attention this boy in his febrile adolescence demands, with his strong hormones and sexual appetites which are fulfilled by pros who work near his home. A sudden crisis will invade the home, when his father be fired; a letter on the table will inform he has decided to leave him alone with a certain amount of money. In the middle of that terrible solitude our teenager will decide to be adopted by this friendly good man ( superbly performed by Omar Shariff who deserved a coveted prize as Best Actor in 2003 by the French Academy of Cinema for this magnificent performance). A poignant portrait who reminds us the cordial relationship in Cinema Paradiso when two well different solitudes converge in the geometry of the life.

A reflexive tale about the human fraternity and how the force that generates is far beyond of Books or spiritual lessons. The life is here, there and everywhere and we have to deal with it with its quotidian miseries and random beauties.

Go for this. It is absolutely rewarding.

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