Longing

An unusual Israeli family drama with a touch of Larry David’s cringe-inducing comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm, this film stars Shai Avivi as Ariel, a middle-aged bachelor, factory owner, and borderline iconoclast. Meeting for lunch with a former girlfriend he hasn’t seen in 20 years, Ariel learns that when he and his ex broke up, she was actually pregnant and has raised their son. The bad news: that son, Adam, has died in a car accident. Left alone to sort out both the surprise revelation and recent tragedy, Ariel goes on a quest to know Adam as much as possible in a past tense. As he discovers both virtue and vice in his boy, Ariel morphs into an overly-protective father who is almost incapable of seeing that Adam had a pronounced dark side. The engine that drives Longing is Avivi’s quirky performance as a relentless inquisitor who is equally prosecutor and advocate in his encounters with Adam’s French teacher (whom the boy stalked) and the ex-con father of Adam’s teen girlfriend. Writer-director Savi Gabizon explores mixed emotions, denial, and fantasy in a situation where actual memory is absent but grief is real. Recommended. (T. Keogh)