Written and directed by Jeanne Balibar
Starring: Jeanne Balibar, Ramzy Bedia, Emmanuelle Beart, with Mathieu Almaric, Mounir Margoum, Marlene Saldana, and a supporting cast of hundreds
Running time: 1 hour and 49 minutes
Language: French, Arabic, Soninke, and many others
Not-rated, with a tender sex scene and a suicide attempt

by Jenny Swadosh

NOTE: This film is part of a triad of new releases curated by French Institute-Alliance Francaise of New York and screening online through Symphony Space Virtual Cinema (NY) and Laemmle Virtual Cinema (LA).

I first fell in love with Jeanne Balibar through the French Institute-Alliance Francaise, where I attended weekly after work film screenings in the Nineties. I didn’t care what was showing, it was a ritual and I was religious in my attendance. From the moment she appeared on screen as a slightly menacing documentary filmmaker and romantic interest in the Podalydes brothers’ comedy, Only God Sees Me (1998), I was transfixed. Over two decades later, here is Balibar as a real life director, writer and star of an absurd romantic comedy about an ambitious New Deal-style (or maybe Great Society?) local government administration and the screwball couple at its core. If you watch the credits, you can also evaluate Balibar’s singer-songwriter credentials with music by veteran collaborator David Neerman.

It would be inaccurate to ascribe a traditional plot to Wonders in the Suburbs. More accurately, the viewer watches a series of expertly staged vignettes depicting moments in the days of a majority-minority Parisian suburb (possibly an equivalent of Port Chester for readers familiar with the greater New York metro area), specifically moments experienced by unlikely municipal officials. Idealistic Mayor Emmanuelle Joly (a zaftig Emmanuelle Béart looking gloriously her age) is embarking upon a series of political reforms, such as transferring the budget for surveillance cameras to a mass language instruction program and instituting mandatory rest periods (ak/a Naps for All) under the general Policy of Urban Time, while a nefarious office building plot orchestrated by the shadowy PouMaPi* organization threatens to undermine her authority. Simultaneously, two members of Mayor Joly’s staff, Joelle Mrabti (Jeanne Balibar) and Kamel Mrabti (Ramzy Bedia) have just divorced and are haphazardly embarking on separate, yet still combustibly entwined, lives as single, middle-aged adults. Kamel, as the Urban Time czar, has recruited his ex-wife into the Joly administration to lead the populace of Montfermeil in therapeutic group breathing exercises.

Secondary characters carry as much weight in Wonders as Beart, Balibar, and Bedia. Frequent Balibar co-star Mathieu Amalric, costumed in shorts, kimono and kilt for new municipal holidays dedicated to these garments, is wan “deputy mayor for eco-solidarity” Benoit Survenant, tasked with identifying and repatriating those “who have been run off” by the previous administration’s Plan for Urban Renovation, or PUR. Meanwhile, civil servants Selim and Marylin Bouazzi (Mounir Margoum and Marlene Saldana) struggle to accommodate a costume fetish with the aid of the newly deployed Sexual Assistance and Satisfaction Department. The supporting cast delivers stunning comedic performances that I watched with awe and delight over and over again. Indeed, I appreciated Wonders in the Suburbs even more after my second viewing.

While the narrative arc of Wonders centers around coupling, culminating in the culturally pluralistic bacchanalia that is Brioche Day, the message at the heart of this film -- and it’s a document with a great deal of heart -- is love, care and responsibility for one’s fellow citizens, and I use “citizens” here not in the legal sense, but as a catch-all for the people with whom we share nothing but geography and our common humanity. While the runaway success of Montfermeil’s mass language instruction program is expertly mined for comedic effect -- Arabic language classes are held on city buses and in the stairwells of the town hall -- it is also presented as a harmonious ideal to which we should wish to aspire. I am reminded of the Jewish prayer, “Hine Ma Tov,” which can be translated as, “How good and how pleasing it is for brothers to sit/live together.” At a time when Americans are enraged to the point of violence at being enjoined to wear a face mask to protect the lives of their fellow citizens, the message of Wonders in the Suburbs presents a startling alternative.

If you enjoyed David O. Russel’s I Heart Huckabees (2004) or David Gordon Green’s George Washington (2000), Wonders in the Suburbs is highly recommended. If you found these films -- particularly Russel’s -- annoying, “difficult” and/or pretentious, or if you don’t bother to properly wear a mask when you go outside, this film is not for you.

*There are numerous cultural and literary references throughout Wonders in the Suburbs that will likely be impenetrable to the average American viewer. They should not impede your enjoyment but may ignite your curiosity. Commit them to memory and Google them later. The sinister PouMaPis corporation’s menacing website is still funny, even if you don’t yet know that it is named after a giant in a Henri Michaux poem. That Joelle brings a Vasily Grossman novel on a first date may defy translation. Let it go.

You can screen it via Kino Marquee along with Burning Ghost and Bare Necessity now.