By William Wolf

THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER  Send This Review to a Friend

An unusual and engrossing film from Israel is “The Kindergarten Teacher,” directed by Nadav Lapid and shown at the 2014 New Directors/New films series. It has now opened commercially.

We meet the amazing Yoav, played by Avi Shnaidman, a five-year-old boy who creates and recites poetry on the spot as he paces back and forth in bursts of inspiration. The poems are sophisticated expressions of the sadness he feels in his life, poems far beyond his years.

He is in the class of a kindergarten teacher, Nira, played by Sarit Larry, who is astounded by the youngster and takes it upon herself to want to get his unique talent appreciated and recognized. The boy has been told by his father that his mother, estranged from his father, is dead, and the father couldn’t care less about poetry,

The teacher, who is married, becomes fixated on Yohav and tenderly looks after him. She even bathes him. In a New York school, if she were seen doing this, she would be misunderstood and wind up on the front page of the New York Post. As a matter of fact, having nothing to do with that sort of abuse, she goes further in a different way. Nira kidnaps the child in a scheme to disappear with him to where his poetry could be nurtured by her in her warped idea of being thus able to further his true genius.

Such a relationship is a sick one, and we find Nira in an impossible situation. It is hard to believe she would be that much off her rocker. But little Yoav can do more than create and recite poetry. He knows how to handle himself as a kidnap victim, as we see in a turn that the film takes. “The Kindergarten Teacher” certainly is unusual, and it therefore makes an impact. A Kino Lorber release. Reviewed August 3, 2015.

  

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