Between the Temples
Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane match each other’s freak (and faith) in this poignant and charming story about running towards what's meaningful to you
Offbeat and outrageously tender, Nathan Silver’s Between the Temples centres on the relationship between a cantor and his adult Bat Mitzvah student, who happens to be his childhood music teacher. Both widowed and a generation apart, 40-year-old Ben (Jason Schwartzman) and the kindly, older Carla (Carol Kane) are two intense and sensitive individuals with complementing quirks. She’s ditsy and he’s depressed – both are spiritually lost. Attentive communities orbit them but cannot really understand them; as they nurture one another’s idiosyncrasies, they carve out a bizarre intimacy that is all their own (“Do you ever feel like your brain is just having a heart attack?” “All the time.”)
Kane’s deep-set eyes accuse and fixate as much as they panic and forgive, while Schwartzman's enduring boyish quality elicits endearment as his awkwardness borders on distressing. Sweet, funny little aberrations, like accidental hallucinations at pitched-up, x2 speed in which Ben chases his younger self, balance more weighty moments, like a truth-bombed family meal that is a crescendo of discomfort (anxious tension at a dinner table is the key to memorable cinema, folks). Accordingly, beautiful nuggets of dialogue strike with alternating humour and devastation (“In Judaism, we don’t have heaven or hell, we just have upstate New York” or “I could just jump into your heart and live in there, if that'd be okay with you”).
Between the Temples warmly encourages running towards what's meaningful to you, and always being open to the eccentrics out there – they're usually the ones with the biggest hearts.
Released 23 Aug by Sony; certificate 15
Between the Temples screens 16-18 Aug as part of EIFF