Madame Rosa

Madame Rosa is a 1977 French drama film directed by Moshé Mizrahi, adapted from the 1975 novel The Life Before Us by Romain Gary. It stars Simone Signoret and Samy Ben-Youb, and tells the story of an elderly Jewish woman and former prostitute in Paris who cares for a number of children, including an adolescent Algerian boy. The film required a transformation in Signoret's appearance as Madame Rosa. The film was viewed in context of Arab–Israeli conflicts, and received positive reviews. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, while Signoret won the César Award for Best Actress for her performance. Plot In Belleville, Paris, Madame Rosa, an elderly French Jew and Holocaust survivor who worked as a prostitute, now runs a boarding home for the children of prostitutes. One of them is Momo, an Algerian boy who is believed to be 11. Although Madame Rosa is Jewish and sometimes makes racist comments about Momo, she raises Momo as a Muslim in respect of his heritage, taking him to her friend Mr. Hamil for instruction in religion, French literature, and Arabic at the Grand Mosque. She is in fact concealing the fact that Momo is 14, expressing strong skepticism about official documents and what they can or cannot prove, and, as a result, is unable to send him to a regular primary school. Momo steals a dog from a pet shop. He later impulsively sells the dog for 500 francs and stuffs the money into the sewer. Rosa, who regards Momo as a troublemaker, takes him to her physician Dr. Katz under the belief that he is syphilitic or mentally ill. Momo later follows her after she has a nightmare about the Auschwitz concentration camp to discover her hidden Jewish space under the staircase, and the two begin to develop a closer bond. Later, after Momo dresses himself up as a prostitute and a real prostitute takes him to a cafe run by a friend of Madame Rosa's believing that he needs help, Madame Rosa makes Momo swear never to prostitute himself or become a procurer. In a park, Momo meets a female film editor, and she tells him he can visit her lab any time he likes.