Cafe Au Lait

First-time French filmmaker Mathieu Kassovitz's Café au Lait bears more than a passing resemblance to Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It, both in terms of its basic plot and its focus on matters of race. Kassovitz not only wrote and directed but also co-stars in this French version of Elle's Gotta Have It. Julie Mauduech plays Lola (in Lee's movie the character was named Nola), the black woman at the center of this love triangle. Lola is pregnant, though she's not sure which of her two lovers is the father. She gathers the two men together to make her announcement at the same time. Felix (Kassovitz) is a white, Jewish rapper and Jamal (Kounde) is a black, upper-class student in France who comes from a family of diplomats. Eventually the three work out their differences and form a household alliance that's almost too good to be true. Yet that sensibility is part of the movie's charm as well. Lola is one of those fictional women of eternal wisdom, patience, and beauty whom we know we'll never meet in real life but still hold out hope for the possibility. Utopian households are a rare thing, but a movie like this at least reinforces the idea of their potential. The performances of the three leads are lively and engaging and the script is smart and funny. In particular, the scenes of Felix and his extended Jewish family are a riot. On the verge of telling his grandmother about Lola and Jamal, Felix is advised that the old woman will, indeed, be able to withstand the shock since, after all, she did survive a year in Buchenwald. Café au Lait has a certain Jewish humor (albeit French-tinged) that has caused Kassovitz to be compared with Woody Allen in addition to Spike Lee. For a first film, such comparisons are hardly small stuff.