Jackson Free Press

 
Avi Nesher's "The Matchmaker" is a gold-dusted fable of love, friendship and everlasting hope.  The movie opens at the end of the story, in war-torn Haifa, Israel, where Lebanese missiles have left casualties, and rescue personnel race to save any survivors.  Against the conflagration of the second Lebanese war in 2006, Arik Burstein, now a middle-aged writer living in Tel Aviv, and his elderly father make their way to a meeting.  They learn that a man named Yankele Bride (Adir Miller) has died and left Arik his wealth.  "I though he hated me," says Arik to his father.

Staring at his old apartment in a misty mood of nostalgia, Arik remembers the first time he met Yankele.   The camera pans and we leave 2006. Nesher takes us back to the summer of 1968, when young people protested "make love, not war," and women burned their bras.   It's the flower-power era.
 
Arik (Tuval Shafir), nearly 16 years old, is a typical adolescent.  He loves to read detective novels, aspires to be a war hero and falls in love with the feisty American cousin of his best friend.  He's on the precipice between childhood and manhood.  During that fateful summer, Arik also meets the man who changes his life.  "Maybe you have a brother or sister looking for love?" Yankele asks Arik and his friends.  Yankele is a wickedly alluring figure in a dark suit, wrinkled shirt and outdated hat.  He walks with a cane that frequently becomes a weapon of sorts. He's bully big, but battered; strangely eloquent, but scruffy.   A long scar cut his cheek into an abstract design. No one mentions it. It's kept below the surface, but Yankele is a marked survivor of the Holocaust.
 
In this film, which is based on Amir Gutfreund's novel "When Heroes Fly," Yankele represents a romantic ideal.  He keeps his own counsel and creatively follows the dictates of his inspiration rather than the standard ways of contemporary society.  He is a matchmaker, specializing in finding love for the wounded and lost.
 
Bolstered by his friends, Arik tells Yankele a tall tale of a sister who has flipper hands, like the webbing of a duck.  He's so convincing that Yankele goes to the Burstein apartment, only to find out that Arik's father and Yankele are Holocaust survivors from the same village and the "flipper" sister does not exist.
 
Arik is grateful that Yankele does not expose the lie and is surprised when Yankele hires him to be his assistant.  He becomes the spy guy for Yankele's matchmaking business.  Through Arik's adolescent eyes, we meet vivacious characters who are as full of life and hope as those in a Fellini movie. The movie theater in the low-rent district where Yankele lives and works is run by seven dwarfs who show only romance films, which are mostly Bollywood musical productions.   The diminutive Sylvia (the beautiful Bat-El Papura), who is in charge of the theater, pesters Yankele for a mate, and Yankele urges patience.  "I'll get you what you need, not what you want."  The love of Yankele's life is Clara (Maya Dagan), who runs an illegal gambling operation in her apartment but helps Yankele coach clients in the fine arts of dating.  One of the clients falls in love with Clara, and his love sickness destroys the equilibrium that has held Yankele and his friends together.

Nesher directs the cast with relaxed virtuosity.  He tells the story matter of factly, the visual equivalent of declarative sentences.  The film's effect is delicately precise, and Miller's performance in particular elevates the film into an enchanting fable.   Although the movie is subtitled, it's easy to get swept into the story. The feeling that permeates "The Matchmaker" is soothing. 

"The Matchmaker" is part of the Jewish Cinema Mississippi 2012 film festival and screens tonight at 7:15 p.m. at the Malco Grandview Theatre. This film, which was nominated for seven Israeli Academy Awards, is a definite must-see.