The Great Role (Le grand rôle), directed by Steve Suissa, is about Maurice Kurtz (played by Stéphane Freiss), a Jewish actor in Paris who hopes for a big break in his career--to play the title role in a production of Merchant of Venice with a famous director, Rudolph Grichenberg (played by Peter Coyote), who wants the production to be spoken in Yiddish. At the beginning of the film the premise is established that Kurtz gets along very well with his fellow Jewish budding actors and very much loves and is loved by his beautiful wife Perla (played by Bérénice Bejo). After auditioning for the part, Kurtz believes that he has been awarded the part, and he so informs his wife and friends. However, Perla waits until he is jubilant over landing the part to announce that she is dying of cancer; afterward, his high-strung agent Benny (played by François Berléand) informs him that Grichenberg has instead selected a famous star named John Woodward, who unexpectedly has just become available to play the part. Should Kurtz tell Perla the bad news at a time when she needs to be uplifted from her pain and sorrow? The decision, in which his friends participate, is to conduct a charade--to pretend that he is indeed playing the part after all. His buddies Simon (played by Lionel Abelanski), Elie (played by Laurent Bateau), Edouard (played by Stephan Guerin-Tillie), and Sami (played by Olivier Sitruk) cooperate in spades, even to the extent of trying to kidnap Grichenberg so that he can talk to Perla on her deathbed. That the French keep secrets of their affairs and mistresses is to be expected; that French culture accepts lies to ensure the happiness of others is a thesis writ large in the film. Indeed, the biggest laugh in The Great Role is when Grichenberg says, "I can't lie: I'm an American." The humor does much to assuage the inherent sadness of the plot, which perhaps could be considered an improvement over the script in Love Story (1970). The story is based on a novel by Daniel Goldenberg, which in turn is a variation on the plot in The Last Leaf (1907) by O. Henry. In addition, there is much satire behind the playfulness and the hilarity. In the beginning, a French director rudely articulates stereotypes about Jews--that they do not eat pork and are clannish. Although Kurtz accepts the loose talk without rancor, his wife is furious; nevertheless, Kurtz eats bacon, is not religious, and his unstereotypic Jewish friends are more a support group than a clan. Vichy France, which played a despicable role in the Holocaust, is a haunting memory for many French today, who may not have come to terms with an anti-Semitism that harkens back to the famous fin-de-siècle Dreyfus case. The role of Grichenberg is clearly intended to poke fun at Stephen Spielberg, and there is even a light jab at Al Pacino, who plays Shylock in the recent English-language Merchant of Venice (2004). MH

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Le grand rôle
by Daniel Goldenberg

The Last Leaf
by O. Henry

A sick artist with no will to live feels she will die when the last leaf falls from the tree by her window--yet for some reason the leaf hangs on.