The plot of Le Grand Rôle is pure French farce, but director Steve Suissa (Taking Wing) chooses to take it seriously. That's a pity, since neither the story nor Suissa's handling of it seems worthy of grave respect. When a famous Jewish American director (Peter Coyote) comes to Paris to film an all-Yiddish film adaptation of The Merchant Of Venice, French actor Stéphane Freiss and his cadre of inept friends leap at the chance to audition to play Shylock. Coyote seems like an unnerving flake, but he inexplicably loves Freiss and declares him perfect for the role. Freiss rushes home to tell his wife (Bérénice Bejo), but she beats him to the punch with her own news: She's dying of cancer. When Freiss' agent suddenly calls to explain that Coyote has instead given the role to an American star, Freiss can't bear to let his wife down, so he claims he got the part. Inevitably, he has to draw friends and family into the charade, as he goes to increasingly elaborate lengths to buoy his failing wife with news and evidence from his nonexistent shoot.
Had Suissa played all of this for laughs—even bittersweet or sardonic laughs—he might have managed more poignancy in his final twist. Instead, he lays it out as strained melodrama, and neither his cast nor his anemic script can support the necessary weight. Freiss' flat, frequent, almost aggressive repetitions of "I love you," combined with his hobby of secretly following and photographing Bejo, make him seem more like a stalker than a lovesick husband. His barely differentiated friends seem to exist mostly to travel around in a black-clad, Reservoir Dogs-style pack, echoing his every move.
Initially, Suissa does seems to have had a pointed purpose in mind—Freiss and his buddies are all Jewish, and some early-film business has them questioning Merchant Of Venice's anti-Semitism, debating Shakespeare's Jewishness, and rushing to temple for the first time in years to play at piety in front of Coyote. But when the cancer plot launches, Suissa jettisons the question of religious identity and mores, along with a potentially interesting side plot in which one of Freiss' buddies keeps his grandmother and his blonde girlfriend apart, preserving a personal illusion that parallels the one Freiss develops for Bejo. What's left is a short and soppy story that Coyote lends some dignity, but not much power. Good Bye Lenin! covered this same ground, but added in social commentary, memorable characters, lively comedy, and a striking observation of a narrow era. By contrast, Le Grand Rôle serves up some pretty thin gruel.