Hello Goodbye (2008)
Directed by Graham Guit

Film Review

After his gruesomely macabre thriller Le Pacte du silence (2003), director Graham Guit takes us off into an entirely different realm of the imagination, once more aided and abetted by living legend Gérard Depardieu. Here, Depardieu is partnered with Fanny Ardant with whom he had previously worked on François Truffaut's dark romantic drama La Femme d'à côté (1981) and Anne Fontaine's quirkily erotic piece Nathalie... (2003). As on those occasions, the two actors work together incredibly well, but their sparkling rapport is just about all the film has going for it. Both actors are ill-served by a pretty atrocious script - a cliché-sodden mess that tries a little too hard to extort laughs from its audience.

Things get off to a bad start when a bourgeois couple decide to swap their chic Paris apartment for a dismal squat in the less salubrious area of Tel-Aviv, apparently with the intention of getting in touch with their long neglected Jewish roots. Even if you are willing to swallow this crazy, half-baked premise, your credulity will then be tested to destruction by the crass mare's nest of implausibilities what follow. When male circumcision becomes not only the object of some pretty grim humour but an entire plot digression you know that something is seriously wrong somewhere. Imagination is as lacking as good taste. The only reason to watch this travesty is to become reacquainted with Fanny Ardant's flair for comedy, which deserves to be exploited more than it has been to date. In just every other department, Hello, Goodbye is a total misfire.

Film Synopsis

Alain and Gisèle Gaash are a happily married couple who, now into their fifties, lead a comfortable existence in Paris. Well-paid professionals, life could not be better for them but, somehow, Gisèle is not satisfied with her lot. On the spur of the moment, she makes up her mind to up-sticks and settle in Israel, to rediscover her Jewish roots. Alain eventually gives in to this seemingly mad whim but once the couple have arrived in Israel they find it is anything but the Promised Land...