After making some serious stinkers in recent years, Egyptian screen legend Omar Sharif returns to form as the title character in the bittersweet French drama, Monsieur Ibrahim, a recent Oscar nominee for best foreign language film.

The 71-year-old actor plays a Muslim grocer in 1960s Paris who befriends a poor Jewish teenaged boy Moses, nicknamed Momo, (Pierre Boulanger) living across the street.

Both are lonely in their own way.

The philosophical Ibrahim, who quotes constantly from the Koran, appears to have no family, insisting that his wife returned to Turkey years ago. Momo lives with a depressed father who is struggling after being abandoned by Momo's mother and older brother years earlier.

Momo, desperate for affection, fantasizes about the red-headed girl who lives in his apartment building, but ends up losing his virginity to an older prostitute, one of several he can watch from his bedroom window, night after night.

He even breaks open his piggy bank to pay for the tryst.

"Why don't you ever smile?" Ibrahim asks Momo one day.

"I can't afford to," he shoots back.

"You're wrong. Smiling is what makes you happy," Ibrahim insists.

One particuarly sad scene shows Momo lighting one candle on his own birthday cake after his father has forgotten the occasion.

The film moves at a leisurely pace and director Francois Dupeyron nicely captures the feeling of Paris in the '60s through music, fashion, dance and cars (Isabelle Adjani has a cameo as a movie star filming in the neighbourhood).

But he's in no hurry to hit audiences over the head with a big message.

Instead, the pleasure of watching the movie is derived from the nuanced performances of both Sharif and newcomer Boulanger.

Ibrahim overlooks Momo's shopflifting from his store, finding it more important to instill his sense of faith and family in the boy.

"Listen to me," he tells him. "You owe me nothing. If you have to steal. I prefer you do it in my shop."

Sharif, who was a screen stud back in his '60s heyday (Lawrence Of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, Funny Girl), is scruffy and unshaven with a big belly, which he shows off in a Turkish bath scene, and yet he's never been more attractive.

Although he was feted at the Venice Film Festival last year with the Golden Lion Award for lifetime achievement -- 50 years in film to be exact -- his role in Monsieur Ibrahim is the bigger prize.

Monsieur Ibrahim plays in French with English subtitles.

(This film is rated 14-A)

More Movie Reviews