MONSIEUR BATIGNOLE

Paris, July 1942. It's Christmas in Juillet for the average, all-too-average citizen during the Nazi occupation. By denouncing Jews to the Vichy puppet government, they can often avail themselves of the “degenerate” minority's assets and property. And so it is with the grasping family of petit bourgeois butcher Edmond Batignole, when gendarmes arrest the Bernsteins next door for deportation to the camps. Madame Batignole and future son-in-law, Pierre-Jean, waste no time acquiring the former Bernstein apartment suite. The main reason Edmond himself doesn't join in the vultures' feast is that he fought Germans in the Great War and still doesn't like them (or the shrapnel wound they left in his leg). Now the small-minded Batignole would rather stay out of politics and work at his sausages from morning to night. He hardly seems the Oskar Schindler or Raoul Wallenberg type. Yet when one of the little Bernstein sons shows up on his new doorstep, and two other Jewish children fall into his hands soon afterwards, Monsieur Batignole finds himself in the position of their guardian and protector, much against his nature and especially against the nature of Pierre-Jean, a jackboot-licking, would-be playwright who takes every opportunity to ingratiate himself with the invaders. An instant hit at the Gallic box office, earning comparisons with Roberto Benigni's “Life is Beautiful,” MONSIEUR BATIGNOLE presents an unlikely hero, reluctant saviour and quintessential Frenchman, portrayed by the writer-director himself. (In French with English subtitles)