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USHPIZIN Send This Review to a Friend
Moshe and Mali are an ultra Orthodox Israeli couple who are poor and frustrated because Mali can’t get pregnant. And what good is a woman if she can’t bear her zealot of a husband a son? Both are hoping for a miracle from God. Of course, in an Israeli film like “Ushpizin,” we know that the miracle will come. Frankly, I was hoping it would be a girl.
Films in which God is asked to perform miracles annoy me, whatever the denomination or ethnicity. In this case the husband and wife have to earn their miracle by being hospitable to an odd pair of escaped convicts with a relationship to the husband’s questionable past. They turn up in Jerusalem during the holiday of Sukkot, and the couple must endure having life turned upside down by the intruders, yet still be kind to them as God would have it.
The film, directed by Gidi Dar and scripted by Shuli Rand, who also plays Moshe, has the air of a fable. Despite some amusing moments and decent acting, it is too precious by far. Rand’s real-life wife, Michal Bat-Sheyva Rand, plays Mali. There is an amusing story involved in how the poor couple gets the Sukkot, a wooden shelter, in which it is traditional to live during the holiday.
The unwelcome guests raise some hell in the neighborhood, which causes a ruckus. The sequence is reasonably funny. But “Ushpizin,” is much too saccharine and miracle-oriented for my secular taste. A Picturehouse release.
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