The Other Story

The division between secularism and ultra-Orthodoxy that marks Israeli society is treated in rather melodramatic fashion in filmmaker Avi Nesher’s The Other Story. The catalyst is the upcoming marriage of Anat (Joy Rieger), who has recently abandoned a wildly secularist lifestyle and joined an ultra-Orthodox sect in order to be with her intended, Shahar (Nathan Goshen), a former pop singer now devoted to the yeshiva. In desperation, Anat’s mother Tali (Maya Dugan) and grandfather Shlomo (Sasson Gabai), a psychology professor, summon his son Yonatan (Yuval Segal)—Tali’s ex—home from the U.S. to dissuade the daughter from the match. Upon arriving, Yonatan—also a psychologist, who is caught up in legal troubles in America—is drawn into one of Shlomo’s counseling cases: an observant father (Maayan Bloom) is feuding over the custody of his son with his soon-to-be-divorced wife (Avigail Harari), who has joined a feminist cult with pagan overtones, which has led to the boy’s kidnapping. One appreciates Nesher’s desire to confront so contentious a social issue by dramatizing it in personal terms, but The Other Story employs so many high-pitched narrative threads that despite some fine acting, it still comes across as strident and lacking subtlety. But its concern with a substantive issue—and refusal to take a simplistic stance—is commendable. A strong optional purchase. (F. Swietek)