The academically advanced daughter of a fundamentalist rabbi, postponing her arranged marriage in order to study the Talmud at a seminary for women in the holy city of Safed, gets thrown together with a cigarette-smoking rebel from France, and the two of them (the ardent Ania Bukstein, the kittenish Michal Shtamler) take upon themselves a custom-designed program of redemption for a dying French expatriate and ex-convict (the regularly magnificent Fanny Ardant, more magnificent than usual). It’s a story, twists and turns aplenty, of feminism and sisterhood in an exotic culture with specific obstacles and specific personalities to negotiate them. The logic of it can pass as the logic of destiny, the bringing together of these people in this place for this purpose, to carve out a life path that diverges from the path that had been charted, a twisty, turny one in place of a paved straightaway. To say it a different way, the logic of it can pass as an object lesson in the art of fiction. This is how the trick is supposed to be done, one thing leading inexorably to another with step-by-step credibility, cumulative implication, climactic impact. It fascinates and illuminates. Directed by Avi Nesher. (2007) — Duncan Shepherd
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