Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache, two longtime French-Jewish directing partners, have just made their most personal film ever, Just An Illusion, which is playing in theaters throughout Israel.
It tells a semi-autobiographical story of a Mizrahi Jewish family in a Paris suburb in the 1980s, choosing to tell it at a time of rising antisemitism in France and around the world.
The film features their trademark humanity, their ability to look deeply into their characters and to make audiences feel for them, which they have displayed before in such films as The Intouchables, the story of a wheelchair-bound man and his caregiver, which was one of the most popular movies in the history of French cinema, and the 2019 film, The Specials, about a Jew and a Muslim who work with people on the autism spectrum.
But with Just An Illusion, the two old friends, who first met as children and who have been directing together for over 30 years, looked closer to home for the story they tell.
Toledano’s parents were Moroccan immigrants, and Nakache’s were from Algeria; they decided to tell a story based on their own lives, one they felt would appeal to people all over France and around the world.
“It is a special movie and a very personal movie,” said Toledano in a recent interview. “But it also moves people and allows them to experience something personal of their own.”
The movie is dedicated to the memory of both of their fathers.
“Olivier and I have lived through many things together during our careers in cinema. But it was totally unexpected that our two fathers passed away at almost the same moment. For me, it was on the first day of shooting. For Olivier, by chance, it was at the end of the making of the movie, in the editing room, almost at the end of the process,” said Toledano.
“Naturally, it was as though we had felt in advance that they were going to leave us. We wanted to depict and capture a piece of the time we spent together in the 1980s,” he continued.
Toledano: Film a tribute to our father's wonderful lives, not just hardships
While the last years of their fathers’ lives were difficult, Toledano said they felt the movie was a tribute to who their fathers really were: “At the end of their lives, everything was very hard for our fathers to live through. But you cannot remain only with the image of the end of his life, because the rest of his life was wonderful.”
Making the movie was a strange, intense time for Toledano: “I was living with one hand in reality and one hand in fiction … The fiction was helping me. I was spending time with an actor who represented my father, with the same coat and the same habits, such as reading the newspaper every day, sometimes yelling, and having this typical Sephardi reaction of wanting to have the last word every time.”
This Sephardi or Mizrahi identity is central to the movie. Toledano explained to me how it was typical of Mizrahi families of their generation to give their children traditional French names like Vincent and Arnaud, the names of the brothers in the film, rather than Jewish names.
“The names were a sign that we wanted integration, complete integration. They wanted to be French. Our families came from French territories. Algeria was a French colony. Morocco was not a colony, but it was a protectorate. It was different, but it was also under French administration. French culture was already there and was very strong,” he said.
For women like Sandrine (Camille Cottin), the mother in the movie, France offered opportunities to advance, and Sandrine’s character can leave secretarial work behind and become a junior executive. It was also important for Yves (Louis Garrel), the character based on Toledano’s father, to work as an executive, and he faces a crisis when he loses his job.
In one funny but sad scene, he goes to an interview and finds that all the men are dressed exactly like him, a reference to a classic Jacques Tati movie scene.
“When I was a child, all the people who worked with my father looked the same to me. They had the same coats, the same appearance. They were not zombies, exactly, but everyone had the same face and the same type. It was funny to shoot that sequence. It was very charming to shoot because it was like a very old childhood memory,” Toledano shared.
Most of the movie is the coming-of-age story of Vincent (Simon Boublil), a shy, awkward teen who is discovering girls, preparing for his bar mitzvah, and trying to figure out life. At times, it brings to mind the great French coming-of-age classic, Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, although Vincent comes from a much warmer family.
Toledano said he and Nakache have been especially interested in adolescence recently.
“When you are around 50, as Olivier and I are, it is a special age. We grew up together, finally, from our youth until now,” he said. “There is a French expression… They say that at 40, you are old to young people, and at 50, you are young to old people. It is exactly like a bridge. You are not old, but you are not young anymore. It throws you back toward the teenage years, when you were also standing on a bridge.
“It is not the same bridge, but there is a parallel… When you are a teenager, you do not realize how important those two or three years are going to be for the rest of your life. You discover love. You discover sex. You discover desire. You discover religion. You discover God. You discover that your parents are not really heroes. All of this happens in a very short time, and you have to understand it.
“Olivier and I always say, when we observe people, ‘What kind of teenager was this person?’”
He said they enjoyed working with Boublil. “It was very intense to direct him because, when you make a movie about this period, you are also stealing pieces of his real life. He is really living through this period. For Simon, it is not cinema. He is really that age… From his eyes, you understand the state of mind of the boy.
Part of bringing their adolescence in the 80s to life was using the music of the era, like the title tune. The soundtrack also includes songs by Joy Division, Earth, Wind & Fire, The Cure, and The Alan Parsons Project.
“Music is very important to creating the right atmosphere. Olivier was really, really into new wave. He has photographs in which he looks like Robert Smith, dressed in black. I was very into funk. Funk is very positive, and we have put funk music in many of our movies, including The Intouchables and many other movies.”
Film released during time of rising antisemitism in France
Tolenado said they were very much aware that this very Jewish story, which ends with a bar mitzvah, would be released during a time of rising antisemitism in France.
“I think the atmosphere in France, what we were living through with antisemitism and the opposition between people, perhaps made us want to show how normal we are. We fall in love. The father loses his job. The mother wants to have a career. She is taking care of two teenagers. The teenagers are fighting over music, over funk and new wave…We wanted to depict who we really are.”
The movie has sold over two million tickets in France, which has a Jewish community of about 200,000, and Toledano said it was clear that the movie was reaching non-Jewish audiences.
“When there is a war in Israel, there are consequences outside Israel. The connection between the Diaspora and Israel is more complicated than before. When there is a war, it is always complicated,” he said, noting that there have recently been antisemitic incidents from both the right and the left.
“Sometimes people want directors and actors to behave like militants, to make speeches and defend positions. From the beginning, Olivier and I have believed that the work we do is the best expression of what we feel.
“You asked why we made this movie now. Certainly, it is more meaningful now than it might have been at another time. This is our way of expressing ourselves. We are going to continue trying to say something through our movies, to bring out more humanity and more feeling,” Toledano concluded.