Absolutely Brilliant!

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

God returns to earth to make a film. It sounds like a preposterous idea and based on this subject one might assume the film quirky, but I found it far too touching to label it so. There's something in humor and warm-heartedness of this film that holds it all together. The film takes the idea from an amusing thought, to a beautiful uplifting experience.I laughed, I cried, I was truly touched by this beautiful film.I have been searching on and off for this film for eight years. I finally found a DVD on amazon.fr but was sadly disappointed to discover that it had no English subtitles.God appears as many forms in this film. This itself is a brilliant metaphor on several levels. Many films try to portray god with in different ways (deep voices coming from the sky etc.) but the way he is portrayed in "Que la lumière soit" is a disarming stroke of brilliance. Hélène de Fougerolles is amazing as Jeanne, she plays the role with such innocence... she is positively luminescent in this film. Poor, poor René, God's trusty assistant angel, what a gorgeous character!Thank you to all involved for such a magical uplifting film.I just managed to see this film again after looking for all these years, I'm sure there are many others who loved this film as I do. I wish someone would distribute this in Australia!

This film was just good fun, not-quite-two hours of entertaining suspension of disbelief--literally, since if one does not believe in God, or believes anything in particular about him, one has to forget that. Which is easy, because every little idea and character is worked out just enough to keep the viewer engaged: yes, the Hebrew typewriter (on which God is typing his screenplay--he is woefully underendowed with electronics and evidently doesn't even have cable, though there is a satellite in his neighborhood) goes to the right when God hits "return"; yes, God is a baby-ditchdigger-pigeon-garbage man; yes, some kind of wings will appear in the proximity of the angel René until he gets his "real" ones. The Burning Bush becomes a hot-dog roast, a woman who reads the newspaper tells God off for allowing the news to happen, the devil has his own rewrite department. There is some kind of dumb or clever joke, visual or verbal or both, every minute. Maybe every thirty seconds.The movie God makes provokes the one long sequence with relatively few jokes: people watching a movie. It reminded me quite a bit--and was surely meant to--of the movie scene in Sullivan's Travels, with men at the lowest ebb of dignity laughing at Mickey Mouse. But this audience is not a chain gang; it is all the people of Paris, cushioned by a social safety net (at one point René says that if he gets fired as an angel he'll have to apply for unemployment; hospitals are evidently good places to die or go crazy; you need a permit to make a movie; the police always seem to be in place whether needed or not; the more dangerous bits of the Eiffel Tower are roped off). Perhaps if there is a message it is that a society is better at providing safety nets than God, but that he survives because our imaginations need him (or, in the movie, vice versa).

This film should finally be released in America. In fact, there should be an American remake, yes! It is such a charming, hopeful, witty and entertaining film, for all ages. I am surprised it wasn't ever released in America(!) IT SHOULD BE! Sorry, but I just don't see the French market as appreciating and giving worthy respects to such a fantastic and imaginative film from a French Filmmaker of their own (they seem to only give recognition to American filmmakers in this respect). But trust an American viewer, if you want to see an uplifting film, without any violence or profanity, the kind of film that leaves you smiling on your way out of the cinema, go see "Que La Lumiere Soit", (Let There Be Light). I am sure they sell it on the internet. Remember, if you live in America, make sure you buy one of those Multi-Standard DVD Viewers, because if you don't have one already, you are unfortunately missing out on so many wonderful foreign films, like this one here by the Great Arthur Joffe.

God has written a script "Let there be light !" and is searching for a good and adequate film-maker. In order to reach this aim, He will temporarily live in the body of many human-being and animals, helped by his favorite and irresistible angel !A deep and original subject, with subtle theological considerations, and treated with a lot of humor, simplicity and generosity.