The Secret Meaning of the Film

Secret Meaning of Monseur Ibrahim

What makes this film so ‘mysterious’ is that they leave out the events that precede what we see on film. Moses’ mother had a clandestine affair with a turkish storekeeper out of frustration with her husband’s lack of attention and long working hours. You see, he sacrifices everything for his job at the expense of his young wife. While buying croissants and baguettes at the local store, she falls more and more under the sway of the silver-tongued turk. Despite his advanced years, the worldly turk is still able to seduce the young woman with his colourful stories and his pithy words of wisdom.

Finally she can resist no more and it is but a hop skip and a jump to a nearby short-time love hotel, since the quartier is full of them. Unfortunately, she becomes pregnant and the husband, who hasn’t made love to her in almost a year because of his attention to his job, realizes she has been unfaithful. He is enraged but she will not reveal the father for fear of his revenge, since Ibrahim’s store is just outside their door. She makes up a Christian name of her lover to fool him, “Paul”.

Their bickering gets worse and worse and the court awards the father custody because of the mother’s infidelity. The father, however, turns out to be a poor guardian and throws abuse at the boy since, after all, he is not really his son. He even talks about an “older brother”, paul, as a way of getting back at his unfaithful wife.

Ibrahim befriends the boy, knowing full well that it is his love child. Meanwhile, the boy is mystified at how the turk knows everything about him and even wonders if he can “read his mind” ibrahim even calls him “Momo”, a diminuative of Mohammed, which confuses the boy even more since he thinks he is Jewish. When caught stealing, ibrahim tells him, “you owe me nothing”. The boy is amazed and confused by such a show of affection. When momo asks him, “where is your wife”, Ibrahim gives evasive answers or silence. “Not answering is in itself an answer”, he tells the boy, but momo still doesn’t get the simple truth that Momo’s mother and Ibrahim’s wife are one and the same.

The father loses his job which puts his life in question; he lost his wife because of his devotion to his job. Now he has nothing. He kills himself and Momo is left alone.

When the police come to tell him, he runs instinctively to Ibrahim. The police begin asking questions and ibrahim gestures for them to come to the back. He explains that he is the boy’s biological father. He says so much in front of Momo when he said, “my wife used to take care of him”, i.e. meaning that Momo’s mother was his ‘wife’, but Momo is too broken up to catch onto this.

Ibrahim adopts him, which normally would be impossible, as the official says, but thanks to DNA testing, he is able to take him to Turkey. There he is killed in a car accident. Of course, he has left Momo in his will giving him all his possessions, even though he still has family in turkey, since Momo is his closest relative.

So there you have it. What seems to be a tender story of the oneness of religions or the coming together of old and young is really just a simple love triangle in a red light district. The director cuts out the first 15 minutes of the film involving the wife's illicit affair to tease and perplex the viewer, but the film is really quite simple. In doing so, he lifts what should have been a simple tawdry tale of infidelity and soap opera fare, into the sublime.

Any questions?