Movie info via Sundance:
A cantor in a crisis of faith finds his world turned upside down when his grade school music teacher reenters his life as his new adult bat mitzvah student.
Between the Temples is a rare, offbeat comedy buoyed by its cast’s lively yet heartfelt performances. Indie stalwart Nathan Silver reteams with co-writer C. Mason Wells for a script that delivers both jokes and emotional depths with a confident hand. Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane are a natural fit as our loving leads, while the rest of the film is peppered with a way-too-funny cast, including Triangle of Sadness standout Dolly de Leon and comedy writing legend Robert Smigel. They create a film that delights in frenzied misadventure while being carefully driven by a warm heart and loving embrace of human connection.—CS
Review:
In Nathan Silvers’s Between the Temples love knows no age limits. This story between a late 30ish temple cantor, Ben Gottlieb (Jason Schwartzman) and his septuagenarian former elementary music teacher, Carla Kessler (Carol Kane in the role of her lifetime) is a gentler Harold and Maude, one without all the absurd morbidity and new age optimism, and sex.
Ben is a cantor who’s lost his canter, his faith and his wife, who died in a drunken silly accident. Carla is a music teacher, longtime widowed, looking to reconnect again to her neglected heritage and seeking a Bat Mitzvah to confirm it. Right away the student teacher nexus is flipped, and by the end of Between the Temples it’s flipped again. Their love is true, deep emotionally and mentally but never physically, soul mates beyond the need to mate.
Silver’s previously jaundiced humor and perspective has wizened into a more mellow crowd pleasing charm- puckish but empathetic, sweet but not cloying. In Schwartzman and Kane he has found his perfect leads. Ben has the ennui of Bud Cort’s Harold, and just a plot touch of the suicidal, that is kicked out of him when the meet cute with Carla occurs. Carla has that Maude Ruth Gordonish joi de vivre mixed with enough ennui to make her en-bliss, that melancholy love for life found and gone and hoped for that animates all of John Keats poetry. She also has the persistence of a Shakespeare heroine. That Bat Mitzvah will happen no matter what, the sooner the better, Bat Mitzvah tradition be damned. Silver is wise enough of a writer and director to know that what Carla and Ben really want for and with each other is what the audience really wants for them too.
With an exchange of breaths in the form of a few breathing exercises their love is formed. She gives him back his voice, restores his faith and becomes his equal with their own sweet music permanently connecting them, a new pupil-teacher hybrid of humanity. I love how Ben schools Carla in Torah and the rules of the kosher kitchen, something in other films which would have been the providence of the mother. Also neat in terms of the character writing is how the two can understand each other’s passions and anxieties and slip in and out of them as the emotional moment commands. It’s a delightful bit of poetry that shows their true bonding.
Between the Temples shows great love for even the characters that would have been severely mocked in a more genre comedy. Silver allows his supporting cast to find their true human notes and blend them into Ben and Carla’s true life-love song. These are character actors who know the difference between mugging and fine, lived in texturing. Caroline Aaron
is a plump kosher bakery of acceptance and delights as Ben’s typically loud but atypically everything else in life mother. Dolly de Leon is a scene stealer as a Jewish convert who is a little too rule-bond with her new religion and its traditions. Robert Smigel finds solid grace notes as the Rabbi. They navigate smoothly between the moments of shared realism and rough and ready farce Between the Temples demands.
Between the Temples gets a 3.5/5 or a B+.
It’s streaming as part of Sundance 2024 . The virtual part of the festival runs from January 25-28.
Credits:
- DIRECTOR(S)NATHAN SILVER
- SCREENWRITERSNATHAN SILVERC. MASON WELLS
- PRODUCERSTIM HEADINGTONTHERESA STEELE PAGENATE KAMIYAADAM KERSHTAYLOR HESS
- CINEMATOGRAPHERSEAN PRICE WILLIAMS
- EDITORJOHN MAGARY
- PRODUCTION DESIGNERMADELINE SADOWSKI
- COSTUME DESIGNERHOLLY MCCLINTOCK
- CASTING DIRECTORKATE ANTOGNINI
- PRODUCTION COMPANIESLEY LINE ENTERTAINMENTFUSION ENTERTAINMENT
- PRINCIPAL CASTJASON SCHWARTZMANCAROL KANEDOLLY DE LEONCAROLINE AARONROBERT SMIGELMADELINE WEINSTEIN
- YEAR2024
- CATEGORYFEATURE
- COUNTRYUNITED STATES
- LANGUAGEENGLISH
- RUN TIME111 MIN
- COMPANYCAA
Leave a Reply