Boston Jewish Film Festival
Hello Goodbye
Tonight, Coolidge Corner, 6:30
Monday, November 9, 7pm: Hollywood Hits Premier Theater
Wednesday, November 11, 7pm: Showcase Cinemas Randolph

(Hello Goodbye is sold out at all listed venues, but standby for BJFF pass holders begins an hour before showtime any available tickets will be released for sale 20 minutes prior to the film.)

There's a scene in Daniel Burman's Empty Nest--a film we reviewed earlier this year for a screening sponsored by the Boston Jewish Film Festival--where the two main characters, a husband and wife, arrive at Ben Gurion International Airport and are summarily subjected to a search of their possessions, the passport authorities doubting their intentions. Suddenly the wife puts a stop to it. "We're Jewish," she says, "I know the dances," and just as quickly she and the agents break into a rendition of an Israeli folk dance. It's a punctuated moment of glee in what had been a mostly tempered affair.

In Hello Goodbye we find ourselves at the airport again and again, waiting to be let in to the country, or just as likely waiting to be let out. It's no surprise that this has turned into the defining cinematic trope of the rise of a distinct Israeli identity and its divergence from other manifestations of Jewishness. The border is the site where eligibility has to be determined, every piece of evidence questioned. In Israel it problematizes the relationship between religion and statehood, the notion that Israel is a homeland for every Jew caught up in the menial, physical task of sorting through documents that (generally) proclaim only nationality.

Hello Goodbye turns this all into high comedy. The protagonist, a formerly successful, secular Jewish gynecologist Alain (Gerard Depardieu!), is struggling to leave Israel. Waiting for his wife he doesn't get on the plane, despite imploring announcements on the PA. His bag is blown up and he's apprehended. But the interrogation becomes a means of psycho-analysis and we relive the events of the movie and look at everything that's transpired in a condescending tone that shows the absurdity of Alain and his wife's actions. Yet it simultaneously turns things back on the interrogators, revealing the entire process as one big joke.

Yes, this is a film about Jewish identity, but a funny one. Depardieu and Fanny Ardent are terrific as a married couple who leave Paris for good after their son marries a non-Jew and they take a terrific vacation in Israel. She immerses herself in the Jewish tradition while he experiences life the life of the struggling immigrant, a lower-class Israeli existence. Hello Goodbye is enjoyable throughout, one of the real highlight's of this year's festival.

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