Let My People Go!

Let My People Go! is a really weird French farce. I don't regret seeing it, but I wouldn't exactly recommend it, either. It has its funny moments, but the main character can be tough to watch.

This looked interesting from the trailer, and at least the person whose IMDb review was on top liked it, so that was enough for me. I liked the idea of Finland and France and a Jewish family and it all seemed very confusing and bizarre, and it was. Bizarre anyway, not so much confusing. It was tough to get a handle on the context. All the houses in Finland were so bright; was it exaggerated to make a point, or is that just normal? Everything in Ruben's house was so old. Was that supposed to say something about his parents, or is that just how it is in France?

I'm glad they didn't do the whole movie in Finnish; I didn't like that very much. I didn't like the French much better. It was kind of distracting because I kept getting caught up on words I could recognize. One time I even figured out a whole sentence. I think it was "how are things with Teemu." Not exactly a monumental achievement, but still.

I loved seeing Teemu's mom's place. It was gorgeous there, and that was a funny scene. Ruben's fantasy about her and the wolf made a lot more sense after that. They could've told us who she was before that fantasy, though. The time period was really weird. Everything looked like the 70s or 80s, but then they had cell phones. The film it was shot on made it look old, too. It was funny that Ruben's mom kept calling Teemu a Swede, all the way to the very end.

I liked the opening part, all the way through when Ruben meets up with his family at the airport. The rest of the movie was okay, but it wasn't as good. It was too easy that Teemu decides to get back together with Ruben just because he wasn't lying about the money. It seemed like there were a lot more reasons for them to break up than that alone, and just because that goes away doesn't mean they should get back together. But it was a nice happy ending for the movie, and I guess I can't say it was unrealistic. People do get back together even though they shouldn't.