Between the Temples (Sundance) Review

PLOT: A cantor (Jason Schwartzman), grieving his wife’s loss a year earlier, strikes up an unlikely friendship with an elderly bat mitzvah student (Carol Kane). 

REVIEW: Between the Temples is a rather quirky, offbeat comedy. The latest from indie director Nathan Silver, it marks his most accessible, mainstream work to date, although the romantic pairing at the movie’s heart is rather unusual. Indeed, the film has heavy shades of Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude, although the romantic pairing of Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane (28-year age difference) isn’t as eye-brow-raising as it was in that film.

Granted, the romantic aspect of the movie is underplayed for the most part, with their romance ultimately being a chaste one. The two leads play two lost souls who find each other at a difficult time in their lives. Schwartzman’s Ben is a cantor who’s been unable to sing ever since the death of his wife, who was an alcoholic but sexually exciting novelist who would leave him provocative voicemails. Now living with his two mothers (a terrific Dolly de Leon and Caroline Aaron), he’s reverted to a delayed adolescence, allowing his doting mothers to do everything for him. At the same time, he whines and drinks (he’s such a man-child he drinks chocolate-flavored mudslides).

He’s shaken out of his stupor when he encounters his old music teacher, Carol Kane’s Carla, who is now widowed and seeks to rediscover Judaism following the death of her atheist husband. While she’s initially overbearing and eccentric, Ben finds himself won over by her big heart as the two prep for her ceremony.

Schwartzman and Kane are both unconventional, neurotic performers, and their oddball chemistry makes the premise work relatively well. Both embrace the madcap nature of Silver’s unusual comedy, playing heightened versions of the characters they’d usually play. With him whiny and petulant, Schwartzman’s role could have been difficult to swallow, even if his two mothers, especially Dolly de Leon’s Judith, are intensely overbearing as they try to set him up with a new girl.

Madeline Weinstein plays his competing love interest here, with her the heartbroken daughter of Ben’s Rabbi (played by an amusing Robert Smigel). Compared to Kane’s Carla, Weinstein’s Gabby is young and sexually exciting, and in a fun twist, the actress also plays Ben’s late wife in photographs. In essence, the film shows Ben being torn between his past and present, eventually revealing that his relationship with his late wife, while exciting, was also somewhat destructive. Despite their age difference, the movie clearly wants us to think Carla is a better match for Ben.

It’ll be interesting to see if Between the Temples manages to crossover following its well-received Sundance premiere. It’s polished enough that a big distributor could pick it up, but it’s also so quirky that it likely will appeal to a more niche audience than the average Sundance crowd-pleaser. Whatever the case, it’s well worth seeing when it eventually comes out, especially if you have a Jewish background. It is amusingly satirical about the politics of being a temple member, even one as enlightened as the one depicted here. 

Sundance

GOOD

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