The first evening of the release of Rest a little, the public is at the rendezvous. If many people came “because it’s Gad Elmaleh”, others are more sensitive to the scenario. Their curiosity may have been aroused by the controversy on social networks, where some members of the Jewish community strongly criticized the director and his film, which depicts the privileged relationship of the famous French comedian with the Blessed Virgin since childhood, bringing it closer to Christian spirituality. Growing up in an observant Jewish Moroccan family, he encountered strong family disapproval when his parents became aware of it.
Gad Elmaleh portrays his spiritual journey to Christianity in the film “Reste un peu”. Photo Laura Gilli
“If you change God, change family and get adopted,” his mother tells him, who interprets her own role with caustic authenticity. The film begins and ends at the church in Casablanca, where young Gad saw the Marian statue for the first time, when he was strictly prohibited from entering the place of worship. Between these two high points, the return of the artist to Paris who plans to receive the sacrament of baptism. The tone of the film is that of… Gad Elmaleh. We find his alacrity, his comic power and his benevolence. The scenes of family dramas combine his art of the gag and the depth of a common sadness of not understanding each other. Other moments depict the spiritual progression of a disarmingly humble man.
Gad Elmaleh portrays his spiritual journey to Christianity in the film “Reste un peu”. Photo Laura Gilli
The character’s questions are accompanied by discussions with a priest and a nun, but also with the Talmudist Pierre-Henry Salfati, Delphine Horvilleur or Fréderic Lenoir. An implicit filiation is emerging with Jean-Marie Lustiger. The tonal mix incorporates a few sketches on religions, at Café Paname. Evoking the Jewishness of Christ, he observes for example that “there is only a Sephardic Jew who can say: ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’”. Rest un peu expresses with rare modesty the mystery of faith and the constant questioning that accompanies it. “I don’t know if Jesus has risen, to have faith is to have doubt (…) But living with this hypothesis of God brings us joy”, he confides at the end of the film. Many spectators are very moved by the parents who feel abandoned, by the son who regrets causing them this suffering, by the man who has the courage to lay bare the most intimate dimension of his being. The emotion is increased tenfold by the fact that the laughter bursts out at the same time, and those who came “for Gad Elmaleh” rediscovered his genius of line and formula.
Gad Elmaleh involved his parents to interpret their own role in “Reste un peu”. Photo JB Burbaud
“This film encourages people to indulge”
When Gad Elmaleh came to find producer Isaac Sharry for his film, the script was about a writer who was coming to Paris to publish a book about the Virgin Mary. “His text was so precise that I felt he was talking about him. I almost fell off my chair when he confirmed it to me, and then I encouraged him to act out his own story. He also involved his parents, his sister, a friend, a priest and a nun to play their own role. As for the young girl he meets, she is inspired by a person he met in Lourdes for a few minutes and who told him that she would pray for him, before disappearing”, explains Isaac Sharry, who insists on the exceptional dimension of this shoot. “Gad wrote and directed the film in two months, he had been carrying it with him for 40 years. We expected the controversy on social networks, but we did not think there would be so much aggression. They are fundamentalists who have no desire to open up to others. In Morocco, we had the chance to know the traditions of the different communities well, this is not the case in France: there is more fear and incomprehension”, continues the producer of Lords (2012). “We prefer to remember the fantastic reactions of the public, which we meet every evening. We are touched by the gratitude and the emotion expressed to us: this film encourages people to give themselves up, they tell us about their experiences of faith, of conversion, with all possible combinations. Many of them talk about the incomprehension of their parents in their spiritual journey. The film was released in France, Morocco, many European countries, North America, Israel, Australia… If Gad was very brave to talk about religion, Ibrahim was able to tell the inner music of each character , which he composed in front of us. I was amazed by his talent and his genius, ”concludes the producer of Rest a little.
Gad Elmaleh involved his parents, his sister, a friend, a priest and a nun to interpret their own role. Photo Laura Gilli
“Music is a kind of higher degree of emotion”
Ibrahim Maalouf and Gad Elmaleh have known each other for several years. “For the music of the film, I started to compose with Gad next to me, it was done in a very natural way. For film music, I try to be as faithful as possible to what is not said, to the emotional discourse. Music is a kind of higher degree of emotion. Then there is the whole technical dimension, which is longer and more laborious,” explains the Lebanese, who is currently composing the music for Claude Lelouch’s next film. The musical corpus of Reste un peu maintains a tonal balance between lightness and metaphysical depth. “Gad managed to deal with a difficult subject with humor and delicacy. In my compositions, I tried not to fall into the trap of illustration, that is to say to apply sad music to a sad character, for example. I tend towards a form of sincerity that captures the complexity of an emotional state, which is never unequivocal, the actors are in the same interpretative process”, continues the famous trumpeter, who has just released his seventeenth album, Capacity to Love, with many guest artists including Sharon Stone, Gregory Porter, Matthieu Chedid as well as legends of rap, soul and more.
The musical themes of Reste un peu accompany the communicative momentum of the main character. “For me, the pieces are like question marks; musically, there is no precise path to faith or spirituality, but a questioning. It was Gad who insisted that I play the trumpet, which must have an ecumenical dimension, because its different expressions are not associated with any specific culture”, observes the musician, whose favorite instrument is recurrent in the texts. sacred, from the trumpets of Jericho to those of the Last Judgment. “Besides, the trumpet is very similar to the human voice, and depending on how you play it, you can infuse your own spirituality, which perhaps brings music closer to prayer. This instrument goes further than the human voice, it can whisper less loudly or cover an entire orchestra; in this sense, the trumpet has a mystical dimension,” adds Ibrahim Maalouf, whose album Queen of Sheba, produced in collaboration with Angélique Kidjo, was nominated for a Grammy’s this year. What touched him the most in Rest a little was the sincerity of Gad Elmaleh’s playing. “This film is a UFO, it speaks of a quest for truth that we all lead. Because deep down, even if we believe, we don’t know; Gad was able to highlight these spiritual questions with virtuosity”, concludes Ibrahim Maalouf, who is currently on a world tour until November 2023, where he will perform for the third time at the Accor Arena in Paris Bercy.
Despite criticism and calls for a boycott on social networks, Reste un peu upsets a large audience of rare diversity, also inviting us to consider living together differently.
The first evening of the release of Rest a little, the public is at the rendezvous. If many people came “because it’s Gad Elmaleh”, others are more sensitive to the scenario. Their curiosity may have been aroused by the controversy on social networks, where some members of the Jewish community strongly criticized the director and his film, which…