SALUT COUSIN!

As shown in features like “Hate” (20th CIFF), the longstanding reputation of Paris as a world community, sans racial prejudice, ghettoes, or skinheads, is in serious question. But Merzak Allouache's tres magnifique comedy-drama finds threads of liberty, equality and fraternity still woven into the great city's ethnic quilt. Smuggling gowns back to his native Algeria, guileless Alilo rooms with his Parisian cousin Mok in the seedy Moskova district, crowded with expat Africans, Japanese, Australians, and even Americans. Mok, a legend in his own mind, covets music stardom by rapping traditional French fairy tales. He boasts of having escaped the vice, drugs, and Arab-immigrant slums, unlike the rest of the family. But as Alilo gradually explores more and more of Paris on his own, he realizes that Mok lies to him about some things. Well, most things. Everything. SALUT COUSIN! may not match the glossy tourist brochures, but after sightseeing with Alilo and Mok you'll truly be glad to say that we'll always have Paris. In French with English subtitles.-Charles Cassady