First-time French director Mikael Buch makes it easy to categorize his characters in this sometimes funny, often strident farce. People are Jewish, goyish, gay, straight, Finnish, French, old, young, or some combination of the above — though they all share a neurotic whininess. Reuben (a fluttery Nicolas Maury), for example, is very gay. He's also French and Jewish, and has found his paradise in a cartoon-colored Finnish town where he lives with his blond boyfriend and works as a Tati-esque postman. Then, in a scene oddly evoking both A Simple Plan and Pee-wee's Big Adventure, the serpent enters Eden in the form of a package containing 200,000 euros. For vague and contrived reasons Reuben then must return to Paris, where his family prepares for Passover, and there everything unravels into a mess of spilled secrets and heavy-handed gags. Though the film alludes repeatedly to the story of Exodus, it remains bound to hysterical stereotypes and hyperbolic plotting.
