Strangers

At first glance Strangers has all the trappings of a cheesy Hollywood rom-com: a handsome man and a beautiful young woman meet and fall in love as the result of a mistaken-identity gimmick. But in this case, the setting is not Beverly Hills or New York but the backstreets of Berlin and Paris, and the two people at the center of the story are Eyal (Liron Levo), a working-class Israeli soccer enthusiast visiting Germany to watch the 2006 World Cup, and Rana (Lubna Azabal), a French-Palestinian ostensibly there for the same reason. On a Berlin subway, Eyal mistakes Rana's backpack for his own and makes off with it; later Rana realizes what's happened and is able to contact Eyal via cell phone. After an oddly touching scene in which each rummages through the other's belongings, the pair meet and exchange bags, after which an almost instant chemistry leads to a night of soccer and one-night-stand sex. But then Rana unceremoniously rushes back to Paris, telling Eyal not to call her again. Eyal decides to seek her out in the City of Light anyway, and his role in Rana's life changes in unexpected and uncomfortable ways. Despite the film's initial reliance on gimmicky plot devices, co-writers/directors Erez Tadmor and Guy Nattiv deftly use these deceptively simplistic mechanisms as an entry point into an exploration of more complex personal issues and political allegiances that inevitably influence these two passionate but dangling souls. Highly recommended. (M. Sandlin)