Jeanne, a young French woman, humiliates herself in a job interview, her boyfriend is stabbed, the police threaten her because the guy she works for turns out to be a criminal. So she draws a swastika on her stomach, gives herself a couple of superficial knife wounds and implausibly claims to have been attacked by non-descript anti-Semites on the subway who mistakenly thought she was Jewish because they found a Jewish lawyer's business card in her purse.
The movie has a kid getting geared up for his bar mitzvah. His parents are divorced and sort of hate each other and they're both annoyed with him. Makes those books about French child-rearing seem less appealing. His grandfather is the Jewish lawyer whose business card the girl claimed she had. The girl's bad job interview was at his office where she was interviewed by the kid's mother. The girl's mother encouraged her to apply because she used to know the lawyer.
All the connections between the characters saved money by keeping the number of cast members down. The lawyer also specialized in anti-Semitism cases. The cops investigating the boyfriend's stabbing also investigated the alleged anti-Semitic attack.
I'll give away the ending:
The lawyer, it turns out, saw right through the story. In fact, the 13-year-old boy saw right through it, too, and convinced Jeanne to tell them the truth. The lawyer didn't care. He's not the police. It's not his job to expose her. He doesn't understand how the cops fell for such an obvious hoax.
Jeanne's embarrassment didn't seem as acute as I'm making it out to be. She wasn't Jan in a Brady Bunch episode. She seemed at ease with the job interview since she knew she wasn't qualified for the job in the first place.
The poor girl just wanted to rollerblade around Paris. She didn't want to work. I don't think she wanted a boyfriend. Her mother insisted she apply for the job. Everything that happened happened because people wouldn't leave her alone.
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