The Kind Words

In writer-director Shemi Zarhin's drama, Dorona (Rotem Zissman-Cohen) is a tart Israeli wife, bitter after a miscarriage, who shrugs off her loving but brood-minded husband. After their free-spirited mother dies, Dorona and her odd-couple brothers (one gay and secular, the other Orthodox and observant) receive shocking DNA results proving that the abhorred, estranged man who they thought was their runaway father is actually genetically unrelated to them (viewers have already been tipped off by a flashback about a forbidden romance in French-colonized Algeria in the 1960s between an Arab youth and a Jewish girl). Now, the siblings turn detective, traveling to visit tight-mouthed relatives in Marseilles to find out if they are indeed products of a secret, long-running Romeo-Juliet relationship—and perhaps are not even pedigreed Jewish. While the plotline flirts with a Mamma Mia! formula, Zarhin works in a most un-Hollywood fashion, deliberately denying his characters firm answers. A well-acted film about family identity, this is recommended. (C. Cassady)