Que la lumière soit (1998)

Director:

Arthur Joffé

Writers:

Jean-Louis Benoît (writer)
Laurent Jaoui (writer)

Release Date:

8 July 1998 (France)

Genre:

Comedy | Fantasy

Plot:

A comedy in which God writes a screenplay and goes to earth to find someone to make the film. |

Plot Keywords:

Screenplay | God | Filmmaking | Jew | Hurtling Through Space

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Hélène de Fougerolles	...	Jeanne
Tchéky Karyo	...	Harper
Ticky Holgado	...	L'ange René
Pierre Arditi	...	La voix de Dieu l'invisible (voice only) (voice)
Gordon Tootoosis	...	Dieu l'indien
Patrick Bouchitey	...	Dieu le pilote
Arielle Dombasle	...	Dieu la blonde
Elie Semoun	...	Dieu le magasinier
Julie Landmann	...	Dieu le bébé
Le Pigeon de Cadéac	...	Dieu le pigeon
Sylvestre	...	Dieu le chat
Catherine Jacob	...	Dieu Suzanne
Frédéric Mitterrand	...	Dieu l'automobiliste
Yolande Moreau	...	Dieu contractuelle
Julien Guiomar	...	Dieu le père

Also Known As:

Let There Be Light (USA)

Runtime:

110 min | Poland:101 min (TV version)

Country:

France

Language:

French | English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

France:U | Australia:PG

Filming Locations:

Budapest, Hungary

Company:

CiBy 2000

Quotes:

La voix de Dieu l'invisible: I wrote the Bible - the best selling book of all time! Where do they get off editing my script?

Movie Connections:

References Secrets & Lies (1996)

God exists, and he has a script

This film was just good fun, not-quite-two hours of entertaining suspension of disbelief--literally, since if one does not believe in God, or believes anything in particular about him, one has to forget that. Which is easy, because every little idea and character is worked out just enough to keep the viewer engaged: yes, the Hebrew typewriter (on which God is typing his screenplay--he is woefully underendowed with electronics and evidently doesn't even have cable, though there is a satellite in his neighborhood) goes to the right when God hits "return"; yes, God is a baby-ditchdigger-pigeon-garbage man; yes, some kind of wings will appear in the proximity of the angel René until he gets his "real" ones. The Burning Bush becomes a hot-dog roast, a woman who reads the newspaper tells God off for allowing the news to happen, the devil has his own rewrite department. There is some kind of dumb or clever joke, visual or verbal or both, every minute. Maybe every thirty seconds.

The movie God makes provokes the one long sequence with relatively few jokes: people watching a movie. It reminded me quite a bit--and was surely meant to--of the movie scene in Sullivan's Travels, with men at the lowest ebb of dignity laughing at Mickey Mouse. But this audience is not a chain gang; it is all the people of Paris, cushioned by a social safety net (at one point René says that if he gets fired as an angel he'll have to apply for unemployment; hospitals are evidently good places to die or go crazy; you need a permit to make a movie; the police always seem to be in place whether needed or not; the more dangerous bits of the Eiffel Tower are roped off). Perhaps if there is a message it is that a society is better at providing safety nets than God, but that he survives because our imaginations need him (or, in the movie, vice versa).