A fool for God becomes a fool for love, which amounts to very nearly the same thing in director Rama Burshtein’s winning romance. “If she weren’t so religious, she’d be nearly perfect,” is the party line on Michal (Noa Kooler), and when the party in question is Orthodox Judaism, that’s saying something. But Michal is also thoroughly, delightfully, and sometimes maddeningly human, and she needs to be loved. So when her unloving fiancé bails just a few weeks before the wedding, she decides to go ahead with the wedding arrangements and see what God (and the matchmaker) can turn up in the way of a groom. It sounds like a setup for a zany farce, but the bracing emotional honesty of everyone involved — Michal, the men she meets, her sisters, etc. — helps to keep it from becoming any sort of standard-issue of rom-com. Instead, it’s an engaging (and surprisingly entertaining) examination, not of belief, but of a believer, a struggling soul who more often than not blocks her own path to paradise. And it makes all the difference that the believer is played by Kooler, who slips from vulnerable to composed, pathetic to charming, girlish to womanly, and even plain to radiant with subtle ease. (2016) — Matthew Lickona
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