Arts & Life

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New On DVD

For Parisian Jews scarred by the Holocaust,
postwar life is 'Almost Peaceful"

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MICHAEL FOX

Special to the Jewish News

Birmingham Trunk Show Event

Thursday, April 7, 10 a.m.-8 p.m. • Friday, April 8, 10 a.m.- 6 p.m.

The latest fashions, beauty products, art or eyewear...
Birmingham's Trunk Show has it ALL!
38 participating stores • Local designers • Great giveaways & prizes

• ARTLOFT Gallery
• Astrein's
Creative Jewelers
• Avalon Salon & Spa
• Avenue Gallery
• Barbara's Paper Bag
• Caruso, Caruso
• Claymore Shop
• Crimson Rose Antiques
• Cristions
• David Wachler & Sons
• Dominator Clothing
• Ecco Shoes
• Edward Dorian

• Festivities
• Graziella LTD
• Greenstone's
Fine Jewelry
• Grinstein
Jewelry & Design
• Hansel 'N' Gretel
• Imelda's Closet
• JuJo Carroll
• Krystyna's
European Spa
• La Belle Provence
• Linda Dresner
• Optik Birmingham

2 hours free parking www.enjoybirmingham.com

• Pink Envy
• Ribbons
• SEE Eyewear
• Shades Optical
• Sherman Shoes
• Sock-It-to-Me
• Spiralz Jewelry
• Tender
• The Birkenstock Place
• The Fuchsia Frog
• The Great Frame Up
• The Knitting Room
• Virtuoso
• Woodward & Maple

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Saturday, April 9
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2005

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A

n exquisitely touching slice
of life set in a Jewish tailor's
workshop in 1946 Paris,

Almost Peactfisl (Un Monde Presque
Paisible) is a gem worth seeking out.
Veteran director Michel Deville's
bittersweet movie was released in
France in 2002 and played a handful
of American festivals the following
year. But like most French period
pieces without stars, the film did not
receive U.S. theatrical distribution and
is essentially unknown in this country.
Almost Peaceful has just been
released on DVD, and it is highly
recommended to
connoisseurs of subtle
character studies and
impeccably staged
ensemble pieces, as
well as those curious
about a historical
period generally over-
looked by French
filmmakers.
Adapted from
Robert Bober's auto-
biographical 1993
novel, Quoi de Neuf Sur la Guerre?,
Almost Peaceful is an understated yet
bracingly adult film that somehow
manages to be ineffably tender and
brutally frank at the same time.
The Jews who survived the war have
drifted back to their neighborhood —
and even their old apartments, in
some cases — and are engaged in the
awkward and occasionally painful
process of rebuilding their lives.
Albert (Simon Abkarian, resem-
bling William Powell with his thin
mustache) and his wife, Lea, own a
business designing and making dress-
es, skirts and coats for individual
clients and shops. The workshop is
located across the hall from their flat,
so their small children drop by when
they're not at summer camp.
The staff of (male) tailors and
(female) finishers is as much an
extended family as a group of
employees.
Although the Holocaust and the
war are over, neither is far from any-
one's minds.
The outspoken Leon was a mem-
ber of the Resistance and helped
hide Albert during the war, while the
reserved Charles was deported and
lost his wife and children in the
camps. A pair of new hires — a tal-
ented young tailor named Maurice
and Joseph, a likable apprentice with
10 thumbs — also are alone in the

world thanks to the Nazis.
Even the only non-Jew, the lovely
Andree, was scarred. Her younger
sister, who fell in love with a
German soldier and had his baby,
was paraded through the streets of
her town after the liberation naked
and with her head shaved.
The most haunted character is
Sarah, who regularly drops by to sell
aromatic soaps or paintings by local
artists. (She carries her goods in a
suitcase, evoking the disturbing
image of Jews packed and ready for
deportation.) She also does a bit of
matchmaking, handing pictures of
single women to Charles that he
instantly and icily returns.

Almost Peaceful:• An ensemble of
Holocaust survivors hold court in a
Paris tailor shop.

When Leon remarks that her list of
potential spouses smells like soap,
Sarah retorts, "Was it better when
soap smelled of marriageable people?"
Almost Peaceful is an elegant mosaic
of loneliness and loss, unspoken
yearnings and unresolved anger. But
if death has cast a cloud over these
people, the movie makes the unam-
biguous case that life is for the living,
and the only direction is forward.
As befits a story about people seek-
ing a return to normalcy — and who
endured enough drama before we met
them to last a lifetime — the film
does not build to a dramatic conclu-
sion. It ends instead with a relaxed
day in the country at the children's
camp and a typically graceful and
quietly revelatory sequence of events.
Almost Peacefill presents various
possibilities for healing but none for
forgiveness. After all, what is an
appropriate response to betrayal?
For Charles, it may mean leaving
France and starting over in Canada.
For Leon, it's ensuring the contin-
uation of the Jewish people by hav-
ing lots of children.
For Joseph, the author's stand-in who
trades his needles and thread for pen
and paper, it is relating this story ❑