MINT TEA is about an expatriate Algerian living in Paris. He is a young man who survives through connivance, theft, and black market ventures. He writes home telling his mother that everything is fine, that he has a great job, a car (he doesn't but has himself photographed in front of someone else's car). One day mom arrives unexpectedly in Paris, believing her son to be an important and successful big-shot. The boy puts her up, tries to con her with another bundle of lies. When she begins to become too much of a burden to him, he has a friend impersonate a police officer and come to their apartment to tell the mother that her papers are no longer in order and that she must return to Algeria. (SOME SPOILERS) Mom, who begins to suspect her son is a con-artist, sees right through this deceit. She goes one up on him though by getting the real police to come to the apartment where they uncover the stolen merchandise he has been trafficking. The boy gets off lightly, and at the end of the movie, boy and mom are on their way back to Algeria where he can presumably marry a nice local girl far from the corrupting influences of life in Paris. In MINT TEA's most comic scene, the mother spawns a traffic jam by delivering a tray of tea and pastry to a previously helpful traffic cop right in the middle of a throbbing Paris intersection! The cop is incredulous and politely says no, thank you, to this delightfully mad woman in Algerian robes and headpiece. She then deposits the tea service with pastry on the pavement. Maybe the nice man will have it later. It was a moment that had the entire audience I saw it with in hysterics.
See also
Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews
