Louis is a photographer re-enacting religious photos. His friend, Zelman, has flu and thus asks Louis to take on a voice dubbing job for him as a favour. Once in the recording studio, Louis is surprised he has to dub an erotic movie with Sybil, who finds him sweet and goes on a date with him. She tells him how she once worked as a waitress in a restaurant where she started a relationship with a Pianist who mourned his deceased mother. After he attacked a Violinist in an act of jealousy, the Pianist was sent to jail for three years, but is now going to be released and Sybil wants to meet him again, so she asks Loius for money to buy a suit. Sybil thereafter disappears. Louis hires the Pianist to play Jesus on his photos, which prove very popular. When the Pianist imagines he is indeed Jesus, he decides to walk on water on a river, but drowns. Louis meets Sybil again and they fall in love.
This unusal farce seems to be assembled from two disparate stories which never truly complement each other, though it has some fun moments and the three main actors are charming. The first story works as a satire on exploitation of the masses through religion, including the delusional tendency of these role models to start believing in their own grandeur, in this case when the Pianist imagines he is truly Jesus. However, the second one fails as a love story between Louis and Sybil, since they meet only once, and then it takes for too long until they see each other the second time around, not until the end of the film, due to numerous complications, misunderstandings and obastacles which become silly and annoying after a while. Though, even the first story is confusing, since it is not clear why the Pianist would believe he is Jesus nor where this is going in the end, unlike the similar and much more consistent "Jesus of Montreal". Bob Hoskins is amusing as Louis, speaking with a surprisingly gentle voice, and a moustache that would secure him a casting in "Super Mario Bros." two years later. He is the best in the sequence where the shy Louis has to dub an orgasm in a studio for an erotic movie, together with Sybil, and their “orgasm match” reveals why they would sense they can be a couple. Louis, a photographer of religious iconography, also complains that "if God exists, I did more for him then he did for me. He never performed miracles for me!" This ties neatly into the ending, where a small miracle of sorts does happen when, due to a string of wacky events, Louis and Sybil do end up together. The jokes are mostly disappointing or lukewarm, without much inspiration. One particularly lame one is when a blind boy is healed when a lost golf ball hits his head, and this is attributed to the Pianist who looks like Jesus. Something more imaginative could have been done out of this, to not allow the movie to look like a dozen of isolated episodes when these three characters always stay the same.
Grade:+
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