Reading the summary, one might expect a film about religion, but it is not. We are rather in the formulation of a set of questions that every being finds himself one day asking himself: Am I here and in the right place.
Stay a bit is an existentialist and humanist film. Which lifts the veil on the specific identity of everyone. Is it religion that makes us what we are or is it what we are that will lead us to a church ?
Pastor Claude Houde declared recently that our century is filled with men and women who thirst for spirituality but refuse religion. Gad Elmaleh’s latest film narrates the quest for identity of a man in the midst of a spiritual crisis. In his awareness, he seeks his place within society and especially his family. He seeks to be in harmony with his attraction for Mary, this vocation, this fascination leads him to want to convert and baptize himself.
We have a good time, with things that are so true.
The film manages to highlight the problem of Catholics in France. When you ask someone if they are a Muslim, they will confidently say yes, but a Catholic will often say, “Yes, but it’s complicated…“.
In the answer above, there is a form of fear, of shame. The film does not say it clearly, but we feel the discomfort of being Catholic. Nobody seems to affirm it in this film, except this young girl who prays for others and who visits the elderly. Gad has a form of admiration for her, because she is whole and fully lives this faith!
Gad explains that for him, Stay a bit Talk about coming out witty. A spiritual crisis where one wonders where one is going. A very sensitive subject, but which shares something strong and intimate. We are on a spiritual journey where we will confront ourselves with living our faith and religion in secret.
The Christian community in Morocco lives silently and young Muslims and Jews live with parents who forbid them entry to the church. It is the prohibition that will create fascination and mystery.
Even if the film has a lot of autobiographical elements, its director never asked himself the question of converting. He did, however, read and do a lot of research. On the screen, the priest who accompanies him is really a man of the Church.
A staging of a blackmail of being:
The different protagonists constantly talk about family, tradition and honour, but without ever trying to understand if the other is happy and if the latter feels in their place. There is a blackmail of the Being who dominates with conditional love. Parents and loved ones live in terror, in fear of losing Gad without trying to put themselves in his place.
A spiritual crisis or a conversion is often very badly experienced, because relatives fear that the latter wants to change his way of being and living. This fear is mainly driven by the fear that this change of religion will create a barrier and an upheaval in the relational balance.
What really stands out in the general atmosphere is this hierarchy within religions: a Jew can become a Muslim, can be a Protestant, but above all not a Catholic!
We feel a lot of irony in the speech of the different protagonists. There is this subtext and this constant return to the Jewish origins of Mary and Jesus which constantly echo in this film. We are trying to prove that one of the religions is stronger than the other, that one of the three monotheistic religions is right about the other.
After thousands of replicas, a big question arises: Is it the hygiene of spiritual life that takes precedence or the rites and traditions? You will be by going to see Stay a bit At the movie theater !
We note that the director never mentioned once the facts of pedophilia in the Roman church, it is perhaps out of respect and to avoid transforming this spiritual film into a controversial film. ?
At least, we never hear about it and no allusion is made, neither in the dialogues, nor in the scenes at the Paname comedy club.
November 16, 2022 indoors / Comedy
Of Gad Elmaleh
By Gad Elmaleh, Benjamin Charbit
With Gad Elmaleh, Regine Elmaleh, David Elmaleh