Life

‘Rabbi Jacqueline’ Film to Put a Female Spin on a French Classic

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By Phoebe Maltz Bovy December 3, 2016

The Mad Adventures of ‘Rabbi’ Jacob is a 1973 French comedy starring Louis de Funès. It involves — among so much else, and I don’t want to spoil it! — a racist French man and an Arab revolutionary dressing up as orthodox Jews, which, as I type this, sounds terribly problematic, but has an anti-racist and anti-anti-Semitic message and… involves an unforgettable scene involving green bubble gum.

Why am I telling you this? Because the film is getting a remake! In late 2018, there will be a Rabbi Jacqueline version! (Tentative title.) The new screenwriter is Danièle Thompson, who also cowrote the original with her father, the French-Jewish actor and director Gérard Oury. Thompson is interviewed in the French Jewish publication Tribune Juive, where she explains that the movie will tell us what came of the children and grandchildren of the French-Jewish, Arab (and Muslim? possibly but I haven’t seen the movie in a while…), and Catholic main characters.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy edits the Sisterhood, and can be reached at bovy@forward.com. Her book, The Perils of “Privilege”, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in March 2017.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy is a former editor of the Sisterhood blog at the Forward. Her writing has appeared in several publications, including The New Republic and The Atlantic. Her book, “The Perils of ‘Privilege,’” was published by St. Martin’s Press in March 2017. She has a PhD in French and French Studies from New York University, and has read a lot of 19th century French Jewish newspapers for a 21st century American.

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