Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000

Cast

Reception

The film was favourably reviewed by Pauline Kael in The New Yorker: "There are eight key characters in Jonah, all in their twenties or thirties, and all seeking solutions to the problems brought to general consciousness by the events of 1968. Not one of them is a comfortable bourgeois; they're the sort of fantasists and obsessives who were considered marginal before 1968... Each of the eight characters is a utopian of some sort, except for the disillusioned former activist, Max. Each of these people is autonomous, looks for his own answers, and acts upon them, and together, the film suggests, they can give birth to a Jonah who will have the acumen to connect their visions. Miou-Miou's the most purely enjoyable person in the movie. This tumble-dried blonde, the Brigitte Bardot the cat dragged in, doesn't look as if she could be an actress, but she certainly is... Marie has a friend in France, Old Charles, a retired railroad worker, to whom she brings stolen groceries; he is played by the veteran French character actor Raymond Bussières, familiar from Casque d'or and films by Clouzot and René Clair. Together, Miou-Miou and Bussières act out fantasies in brief set pieces. The whole film is designed as a collection of little routines. Jonah is so ingeniously constructed that one can enjoy it the way one enjoyed Renoir's egalitarian films of the thirties, relating to each character in turn. "

The film was selected as the Swiss entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 49th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.