Neuilly is an extremely affluent suburb of Paris. Poissy is the location of Maison Centrale de Poissy, a maximum-security prison near the Notre-Dame church. In the French comedy film “Neuilly-Poissy,” Max Boublil plays the role of wheeler-dealer Daniel Abiserra, a Tunisian Jew who is arrested for tax evasion and employing illegal workers in the several restaurants he owns. He is sent to Poissy prison.
“Neuilly-Poissy” will be screened on Monday, March 23, at 7:30 p.m., in the Kaplan Theatre at the Evelyn Rubenstein JCC.
Upon admission, the prison psychiatrist tells Daniel that he can turn to religion for assistance. “Abiserra is a Muslim name,” she says. “There are prayer groups.”
“But I’m Jewish,” says Daniel.
“That could be a problem,” says the psychiatrist. “If I were you, I wouldn’t tell anybody.”
Poissy is populated by the French underclass: Roma, Arabs, North Africans and sub-Saharan Africans. Daniel lacks membership in any of the inmate subcultures. As the new inmate, his descent into deprivation takes many forms: loss of freedom, privacy, security.
While Daniel learns to adapt to prison life, his wife Lisa attempts to hold the businesses together.
Daniel earns the respect of his cellmates by taking the blame for possession of a contraband cellphone. This results in Daniel’s confinement in solitary for two weeks. When he returns to his cell, Daniel has earned his fellow inmates’ admiration.
Meanwhile, Lisa earns the respect of the restaurant employees by figuring how to put an end to the financial hemorrhaging through laundering Daniel’s hidden cash reserves back into the bank.
“Neuilly-Poissy” reveals itself as a comedy rather than a sociological study of prison life by explaining the formation and proliferation of unique inmate subcultures as a group-generated defense mechanism; i.e., a manner of coping with the austere, mundane and controlling atmosphere of the penitentiary.
As in conventional society, subcultures emerge when persons sharing similar status, conditions or situations form social enclaves for support and solidarity. For inmates, subcultural formation is the equivalent of creating and reestablishing some semblance of identity, power and control where none previously existed.
It is noteworthy that among the inmates Daniel comes in contact with in Poissy, there are no murderers, rapists or child molesters. This film is, after all, a feel-good comedy.