BETWEEN THE TEMPLES (A-minus) - There they are, at the top of the ticket, a dream team: Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane. You go into it thinking "Please don't screw this up." Thankfully, filmmaker Nathan Silver -- who has flown under our radar up until now -- delivers, along with his stars.
Schwartzman plays Ben, a depressed cantor who has lost his voice -- but not his job, because his two moms are big donors to the temple. He gets drunk (and slugged) at a dive bar. He lies prone in front of an oncoming truck (to no avail; it easily stops before it gets to him). By chance, he runs into his childhood music teacher, Carla (Kane), who decides to take his bat mitzvah class, along with a bunch of tweens, as a sly way of getting closer to him to look out for him.
What develops is a charming update of "Harold & Maude," featuring a quirky odd couple who develop an improbable but deep bond that helps heal each person's psychic wounds. No one is better at this than Schwartzman, the master of intellectual quirk, and Kane (TV's "Taxi" and "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt"), who can find the humanity in any screwball character. The two of them make the screen ripple with joy and melancholy, as they blithely carry every minute of the nearly two-hour run time.
It's a little disconcerting to see Schwartzman -- the breakout youngster from "Rushmore" and then so many other Wes Anderson films and lo-fi indies -- start to descend into a chubby middle age. But that aging process, while it threatens to take the zip off his fastball, has the effect of wiping that smirk off his face and revealing another layer to his personality. Kane looks surprisingly youthful here, a cross between Ruth Gordon and Julie Delpy, a savvy mix of would-be cougar and mother hen. Their bond is ostensibly platonic, but it does intrude on others' efforts to set Ben up with the rabbi's daughter, Gabby (a vivacious Madeline Weinstein), whose healthy lust is too much for Ben to contemplate these days. (The rabbi is played by gagster Robert Smigel, who delivers one-liners with a low-key confidence.)
None of this would mean much if Silver didn't imbue it with smart humor and carefully layered characterizations. The whole production has the grittiness of a 1970s comic morality play, even copping the retro graphic styles for the opening credits (plus, see the soundtrack samples below). And the cast sinks its teeth into the clever dialogue, much of it subtle and deliciously Jewish. At one point Ben has to explain away the concepts of the afterlife: "In Judaism, we don't have heaven or hell; we just have upstate New York." Upon first meeting Carla, he tries to jog her memory, bragging that he got top grades. Her retort: "It's music class; everybody gets an A."
You can never be certain, right up until the end, if Ben will get his voice back (and if that matters), or if he seriously thinks he has more of a future with a woman decades his senior while passing up a romp with a randy younger woman. But the particulars of romantic possibilities are not really the point here. Toss aside your scorecard and let a movie by adults, for adults, carry you away with its nuanced storytelling.
BONUS TRACKS
The soundtrack adds to the '70s vibe with a bunch of folky throwbacks, many in Hebrew. They set a Lee Hazelwood mood. There are a couple by Arik Einstein, including "Hi Tavo (She Will Come)":
There is the glum "Wish I Was a Single Girl Again," from Tia Blake from 2008:
And this dusty from Buddy Gibson, "To Be or Not To Be":
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