Producers: Tim Headington, Theresa Steele Page, Nate Kamiya, Adam Kersh and Taylor Hess Director: Nathan Silver Screenplay: Nathan Silver and C. Mason Wells Cast: Jason Schwartzman, Carol Kane, Dolly de Leon, Caroline Aaron, Robert Smigel, Madeline Weinstein, Matthew Shear, Lindsay Burdge, Jason Grisell, Pauline Chalamet, Stephen Lack and Jacob Morrell Distributor: Sony Pictures Classical
Grade: B
There’s a raggedy visual vibe to Nathan Silver’s May-December romance, which often looks like a home movie, with the extreme close-ups emphasized by cinematographer Sean Price Williams virtually suffocating. The grubbiness of Madeline Sadowski’s production design and Holly McClintock’s costumes add to the claustrophobic feel. But “Between the Temples” employs that style, along with John Magary’s rough editing, to emphasize how stifling relationships can be—and how liberating. Its sense of humor is also double-edged, trading on both loss and discovery. And as a considerable bonus it invites us to revel in watching veteran Carol Kane do her classic comic shtick in a lead role for a change.
Technically, though, Kane’s Carla O’Connor (née Kessler) isn’t the focus of the story. That’s Ben Gottlieb (a scruffily hangdog Jason Schwartzman), a cantor in the temple overseen by Rabbi Bruce Koenig (Robert Smigel). Ben’s falling apart emotionally after losing his voice—and, perhaps, his faith. Devastated by the accidental death of his novelist wife Ruth, Ben has moved back in with his biological mother Meira (Caroline Aaron) and her partner Judith (Dolly de Leon), who are concerned about his mental health—understandably, since an encounter with a truck indicates he’s actually suicidal—and his lack of female companionship, which they hope to remedy.
They set him up with a girl named Leah (Pauline Chalamet, sister of you-know-who) through a Jewish match site called Jdate. But Leah confesses that she’s actually a Protestant. They also encourage his introduction to the Rabbi’s daughter Gabby (Madeline Weinstein), though she’s not without problems of her own—her father calls her a mess. (Weinstein also plays the departed Ruth in flashbacks and Ben’s imagination.) Ultimately that ploy doesn’t work out either, despite the best efforts of all concerned. Instead, an accidental reunion with someone from Ben’s past provides him with an unexpected infusion of hope.
Returning to his temple duties after a leave of absence, Ben freezes when called on to chant and flees from the pulpit, winding up in a bar where he gets drunk—and into a fight. It’s there that he’s helped by Carla (Kane), a widow who just happens to have been his music teacher when he was a boy (played, in a hallucinatory flashback brought on by a home video of his bar mitzvah, by Jacob Morrell). She commiserates with him, telling him she was recently let go from her teaching job after forty-two years. Then she drives him home.
The next day Carla bursts into the class he’s teaching for youngsters preparing for their bar and bat mitzvahs at the temple with the news that she wants to become a student of his, too. He demurs, arguing that at seventy she’s too old for a bat mitzvah. But she insists, and as they work together they develop a connection that becomes much more than educational. There’s a bit of a “Harold & Maude” feel to what follows, but with a harm of its own. It all culminates in an intense Shabbat dinner at the Gottliebs where decisions are reached and revealed that are shocking to some but right for those who make them.
Each viewer will choose their favorite moments in the journey of this improbable couple. Perhaps it will be the delicious moment at Mildred’s restaurant, where Carla takes Ben to enjoy her favorite hamburger—which turns out to have a surprise ingredient that leads the owner (Stephen Lack) to conclude, after a hilarious conversation with Ben, that he could use a second sink. Or the deadpan discussion Ben has with a flustered priest (Jason Grisell) about heaven. Or the repeated references to the Rabbi’s susceptibility to donations to the temple. Or the outing at which Carla explains to her atheist son Nat (Matthew Shear) her decision to have a bat mitzvah in which his wife (Lindsay Burdge) and twin daughters are open-minded to participating while he can’t believe his ears. Or the moment when she brings out the LP she made as a young singer for Ben to play—admitting that it was less than a chart-topper. “Between the Temple” is filled with such idiosyncratic bits, some funny, some poignant.
Schwartzman and Kane have distinctive comic styles but they mesh nicely here, and the supporting cast have been carefully chosen to bring dashes of varied ingredients—some charming, some harsh, some befuddled—to the mix. Smigel, de Leon and Aaron all get their opportunities to take center-stage and handle them well, but it’s Weinstein who’s faced with a lot of the most challenging material, like a sequence involving the phone messages from Ruth that Ben’s kept, or Gabby’s reaction to what happens at the Shabbat dinner, and she pulls them off impressively.
Admittedly the movie’s setting is rather insular, but its observations about family dynamics and the implausible realities of romance have universal resonance. And Schwartzman and Kane make a memorable team.