In a concrete housing block outside Paris populated by both Jews and Muslims, eighteen-year-old Laura (Fanny Valette) rebels against the religiosity of her devout sister Mathilde (Elsa Zylberstein) and Tunisian-born mother (Sonia Tahar) by adhering to a Kantian worldview. This opposition between reason and faith, however, only proves temporary in La Petite Jérusalem, as Karin Albou’s elegant film posits both sets of values as similarly constricting, corrosive forces that detrimentally impede, rather than encourage the blossoming of, female sexuality. As Laura falls for an Algerian and Mathilde – after uncovering her husband’s (Bruno Todeschini) infidelity – begins to open herself up to bedroom experimentation, what emerges is a vision of ideological suppression of sexual desire in which the struggle to reconcile heartfelt beliefs with carnal urges reveals the latent chauvinism of both sisters’ governing principles. Whereas Valette’s understated performance conveys her internal clash between logic and passion, however, Albou’s direction often succumbs to expository redundancy, the most egregious example of which involves a philosophy class lecturer who makes painfully explicit the implicit themes coursing throughout this respectable portrait of inhibiting zealotry.
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