The Favour, the Watch and the Very Big Fish (1991) Spoiler-Free Summary – What It's About

In the heart of Paris, where every cobblestone seems to echo a whispered prayer, a modest photographer makes his living capturing the quiet sanctity of saints. Louis Aubinar has turned his lens into a gentle conduit for faith, producing images that feel both reverent and oddly human. The city’s reverence for sacred art is matched only by its tolerance for the absurd, and the film’s tone rides that line between heartfelt devotion and far‑cious comedy, inviting the audience to smile at the everyday miracles and mishaps of creative life.

Louis shares his cramped, slightly chaotic apartment with his sister, Elizabeth, whose culinary experiments are as volatile as the city’s traffic. Their domestic routine is punctuated by the demands of Norbert, a stern curator whose sudden shift from John the Baptist to Jesus as the next subject threatens Louis’s precarious job security. Adding another layer of pressure, Louis’s longtime friend Zalman—a struggling voice‑over artist—asks for a tiny favor that pulls the photographer into a world far removed from holy iconography.

That favor lands Louis in an unexpectedly intimate recording studio, where he lends his voice to a risqué project starring the enigmatic Sybil. The experience, equal parts embarrassing and electrifying, drags him into a comedic whirl of mistaken identities and off‑beat connections, all while the pressure to find a “perfect” Jesus model grows louder. The search leads him to an unconventional muse—an eccentric, magnetic figure whose very presence seems to ripple through the streets, turning ordinary onlookers into believers.

As Louis navigates the tangled web of artistic ambition, sibling chaos, and unlikely romance, the film revels in its playful exploration of faith, fame, and the absurdities that lie between. The Parisian backdrop, the eccentric cast, and the ever‑present question of what makes someone worthy of a holy portrait keep the story buoyant, promising a delightful dance of humor and heart without ever revealing the final destination.