Neuilly sa mère!
| Neuilly Yo Mama! | |
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| Directed by | Gabriel Julien-Laferrière |
| Produced by | Djamel Bensalah Isaac Sharry |
| Screenplay by | Philippe de Chauveron, Marc de Chauveron |
| Starring | Samy Seghir |
| Cinematography | Pascal Gennesseaux |
| Edited by | Jean-François Elie |
| Distributed by | TFM Distribution |
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Release date
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Running time
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97 minutes |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Budget | $4.9 million |
| Box office | $38.6 million |
Neuilly Yo Mama! or Neuilly sa mère ! is a 2009 French comedy film directed by Gabriel Julien-Laferrière. It stars Samy Seghir as a beur teenager who moves from the housing projects to the upscale neighborhood of Neuilly-sur-Seine. Because of its use of social inequality as a comedic device, it has been compared to the 1988 French comedy Life is a Long Quiet River (La vie est un long fleuve tranquille).
A word-for-word translation of the film's title is "Neuilly her mother!". The title is a play on the vulgar French insult nique ta mère ("Screw your mother"), in which Neuilly effectively serves as a euphemism.
Fourteen-year-old Sami (Samy Seghir) is a beur (a French person of North African descent) living in Chalon-sur-Saône, a relatively poor city in the Burgundy region. When his widowed mother (Farida Khelfa) takes a job working on a boat, she sends Sami to live with her sister Djamila (Rachida Brakni), who is married to Frenchman Stanislas de Chazelle (Denis Podalydès). They live in the upscale neighborhood of Neuilly-sur-Seine, an affluent suburb of Paris, with Stanislas' two children from his prior marriage: Charles (Jérémy Denisty), who aspires to be a politician someday, and Caroline (Chloé Coulloud). At first Charles resents Sami's presence in his house, but they gradually become friends. Sami enrolls in classes at Saint-Exupéry, a private school there.
Sami is made fun of by many of his classmates at school, particularly Guilain Lambert (Mathieu Spinosi). He impresses the blonde violinist Marie (Joséphine Japy), however, with his tender side: during a music class one of the pieces moves him to tears by making him think of his friends back in Chalon. He and Marie become friends. Guilain, who also has his eye on Marie, gets revenge by tricking Sami into eating pork (which Sami cannot eat, as it is haraam), and Sami retaliates by beating up Guilain. Marie chides Sami, saying she will not tolerate violent boys, but they soon make up. Later, though, when Guilain and Charles end up running against one another in the class elections, Guilain hires a local thug Malik (Booder) to mug Sami and Charles. They manage to escape from Malik and his thugs, but Malik gives Sami a black eye in the process; when Marie sees the black eye, she becomes angry with Sami, thinking he got in a fight again.
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