Hello Goodbye (2008/I)

Director:

Graham Guit

Writer:

Michael Lellouche (writer)

Release Date:

26 November 2008 (France)

Genre:

Comedy

Cast

Fanny Ardant	...	Gisèle Gaash
Gérard Depardieu	...	Alain Gaash
Jean Benguigui	...	Simon Gash
Lior Ashkenazi	...	Yossi
Sasson Gabai	...	Le chef de la police
Gilles Gaston-Dreyfus	...	Siletsky
Françoise Christophe	...	La mère d'Alain
Manu Payet	...	Shapiro
Jean-Michel Lahmi	...	Saint-Alban
Muriel Combeau	...	Mme Saint-Alban
Clémentine Poidatz	...	Gladys
Julien Baumgartner	...	Nicolas
Claudine Baschet	...	La grand-mère
Jean-François Elberg	...	M. Sapin
Alix de Konopka	...	Mme Gash

Also Known As:

Hello Goodbye - Entscheidung aus Liebe (Germany) (DVD title) [de]

Runtime:

99 min

Country:

France | Italy | Israel

Language:

French

Color:

Color

Certification:

France:U

Filming Locations:

Israel

Company:

Babe Film

not so funny movie about a couple in midlife crisis

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

"Hello Goodbye" is a movie about a wealthy middle-aged French couple that suddenly experiences a storm of difficulties. Alain Gaash is Jewish and his family is surprised and somewhat taken aback when his son decides to marry a Christian woman in a church. Alain's wife Gisèle had converted to Judaism in order to marry him, but she realizes suddenly that his family still sees her as non-Jewish. Alain's Jewish friends don't see him as Jewish enough because he isn't circumcised, and the couple ends up having a late identity crisis. The main focus of the film though, is not so much on the search of Jewish identity, but on Gisèle's search for meaning: she was a housewife for years, who gave up her career to support her husband and raise their son. Now that the son has left home, her life is empty. She does all sorts of crazy things, like destroying her expensive car, and convincing her husband to move to Israel, where they had no secure income or even a home. Gisèle seeks the "help" of a very suspicious drug-using "Rabbi" and falls for his good looks and "wisdom". Alain suspects that their bad love-life is due to the fact that he is not circumcised, even if they had had problems in this area before their identity crisis, so he gets a circumcision. This of course, changes nothing. In any case, the couple barely has anything to do with each other: Gisèle finds out where Alain is working by chance, Alain finds out by accident that Gisèle didn't tell him their furniture was thrown into the Meditarranean on the way to Israel... At some point, not only do the main characters lose contact with each other, the film loses all contact with it's audience. The ending is so ridiculous and shmalzig it's unbearable. My recommendation: Skip it.