Between the Tem­ples – first-look review

Got­tleib is in trou­ble. Since the death of his wife, Ben (Jason Schwartz­man) has found him­self in a place of per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al cri­sis. He’s moved back in with his moth­ers, Meira (Car­o­line Aaron) and Judith (Dol­ly de Leon), fol­low­ing the sud­den death of his wife a year ago, and still can’t per­form his job as the can­tor for his local syn­a­gogue because he’s lost his voice. Depres­sion and lone­li­ness lead Ben to a dive bar, where, after one too many mud­slides (that’s vod­ka, Irish cream, cof­fee liqueur and heavy cream in case you were won­der­ing) he gets into it with anoth­er patron, who prompt­ly knocks his lights out.

When he comes to, a kind­ly old­er lady – who had ear­li­er been per­form­ing karaōke in the back room – is stand­ing over him con­cerned. Car­la Kessler (Car­ole Kane) helps Ben to his feet and insists on dri­ving him home. Lat­er, she turns up at the bar and bat mitz­vah class he’s teaching…hoping to become his lat­est stu­dent. It turns out that Car­la used to teach Ben music when he was a fifth grad­er, and despite the odd sit­u­a­tion the pair find them­selves in, they forge an unlike­ly – but very sweet – friendship.

Although Between the Tem­ples boasts a sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er pro­file cast than direc­tor Nathan Silver’s eight pre­vi­ous fea­tures, the film retains many hall­marks of the New York indie scene main­stay. He wrote the script with his col­lab­o­ra­tor C. Mason Wells, while Sean Price Williams – the city’s hottest cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, recent­ly turned fea­ture film­mak­er him­self with The Sweet East – shot the film on 16mm, giv­ing the footage a won­der­ful warmth and inti­ma­cy. John Mag­a­ry, anoth­er Sil­ver reg­u­lar, com­pli­ments the images with his play­ful, jit­tery edit­ing, cre­at­ing a view­ing expe­ri­ence that is as frac­tured and whirling as our can­tor in crisis.

As Ben opens up to Car­la about his painful cir­cum­stances, the well-mean­ing but med­dling Judith attempts to set up a poten­tial date between him and their friend Rab­bi Bruce’s daugh­ter Gab­by (Made­line Wein­stein), a strug­gling actress embar­rassed by her father’s inter­fer­ence in her love life. While Gab­by is instant­ly intrigued by the neu­rot­ic, hang­dog Ben, he’s still griev­ing and strug­gling to get his life back on track (or even know what track he wants to be on).

The odd cou­ple set-up is rem­i­nis­cent of Harold and Maude, and the excel­lent sound­track even feels like a nod to the Hal Ash­by clas­sic, but Ben’s prob­lem isn’t so much that he wants to die (in fact, he’s very con­cerned about what hap­pens after death) but that he’s com­plete­ly for­got­ten how to live. He’s unsure if he wants Car­la to be a friend, lover or par­ent, tak­ing to stay­ing in her house in her adult son’s bed­room and wear­ing his pyja­mas (some­thing that her son is extreme­ly unhap­py about when he finds out).

Although Schwartz­man and Kane are play­ing char­ac­ters with­in their wheel­house, their chem­istry togeth­er is a joy with every line of dia­logue feel­ing com­plete­ly nat­ur­al to the extent it feels like we’re peek­ing through the win­dow to catch their pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions. Ben’s ini­tial defen­sive­ness and Carla’s ten­den­cy to deflect through whim­sy soon give way to a gen­uine con­nec­tion, forged out of a desire to be tru­ly seen by anoth­er per­son. Dol­ly De Leon is also a treat in her first major role since Tri­an­gle of Sad­ness, show­cas­ing her bril­liant comedic tim­ing (sure­ly a meaty lead role can’t be far away?).

This is a won­der­ful­ly observed (and often very fun­ny) film about the faith we have in a high­er pow­er and each oth­er, and its uncer­tain con­clu­sion mir­rors the appre­hen­sion both Ben and Car­la have about where they’re going in life. The styl­is­tic flour­ish­es stay on the right side of ​‘quirky indie’, and Between the Tem­ples eas­i­ly hits its dark­er sto­ry beats, anchored by its infi­nite­ly charm­ing leads.