Word: momo
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Madame Nadine is as different from Madame Rosa as Momo is, or so she seems. On the exterior Madame Rosa is not excessively warm though she is certainly attached to Momo. Nor is Momo particularly emotional, either. Rather, their appearances reflect little while Madame Nadine, on the other hand, is nothing but appearances. She acts overly concerned, but it is only an act. Like her children who send Momo fleeing by calling him an Arab she is no more than fascinated by what he is. She listens to his story, and records it, but when he runs...
...would walk up to a poorly-dressed Arab boy, touch his cheek and ask him why he is crying? Who would tape his heart-rending tale and then let him get up and run away? It isn't plausible, especially if Madame Nadine is supposed to care for Momo as much as she seems to. But, that's just the point. Not only is she using him for her own pleasure, to look at, and for her own uses, to tape, but the very fact that she does so only emphasizes and underlines and contrasts the sincerity of Madame Rosa...
Even though there are differences between Momo and Madame Rosa they are as superficial as Madame Nadine's love for the boy. What they boil down to is a glue that binds. Both the woman and the boy are members of persecuted minorities, alone, haunted by their pasts and trapped as much by wanting to stay in their surroundings as by their material inability to escape. It is irrelevant, as far as their relationship goes, that, for instance, one is Jewish and the other Arab. Because it is, director Moshe Mizrahi makes the point that appearances really are no more...
There are other examples of appearances fooling us. The best is Madame Lola, a lean black prostitute who ends up supporting Madame Rosa and Momo when her fellow prostitutes no longer send their children to the old woman. She is genuinely kind and genuinely cares, which belies her appearance as a prostitute. But that isn't all. In Momo's first taping he reveals that Madame Lola is really a former male fighter who has had hormone injections and now "peddles her ass." It is a revelation that comes as a complete surprise which means, even more, that whether...
...CARRIED to near perfection by Simone Signoret's brilliant rendition of Madame Rosa and Samy Ben Youn's impressive performance as Momo. The only flaws, which are minor, lie in the set and the atmosphere portrayed, not in the acting. For instance, Madame Rosa's children are too healthy and happy and the prostitutes who visit them are too well-dressed and well-mannered to be streetwalkers in one of Paris's poorest sections. But these are no more than faults in appearance. And since the point of the movie is that appearance overlies but doesn't represent substance...