Eyes Wide Open
Eyes Wide Open is an extraordinarily powerful film set within the orthodox community of Jerusalem; to look at it, and if you ignore the electricity cables and TV aerials, the area in which they live could be a hundred years old. Aaron (Zohar Strauss) is a butcher, running his late father’s shop; he has a wife and kids, but his life seems suffused by melancholy.
Yet a strange and unexpected passion ignites within him when a younger man, a failed yeshiva student (Ran Danker), insinuates himself into Aaron’s shop and life. Suddenly Aaron’s whole being, personal and communal, is under threat.
There is perhaps some connective tissue missing in the telling, here — the stages of Aaron’s reaction are somewhat opaque. But the plot grips tightly and one’s sympathy for the characters and their dilemmas is elicited without manipulation. The film contrasts the humane lessons of Torah study with the more thuggish real-life behaviour of some community members, and otherwise contemplates this painful situation with a certain sharp-eyed reserve. Excellent all round. — Shaun de Waal
It’s a Wonderful Afterlife
Director Gurinder Chadha has near-legendary status for her barnstorming popular classic, Bend It Like Beckham, but her latest movie misses the goal. Doting Indian mum Mrs Sethi (Shabana Azmi) has furiously murdered all the people who have been nasty to her daughter Roopi (Goldy Notay), whom she has tried to marry off, and these victims come back as ghosts. All the potential for drama and comedy is sacrificed to this totteringly high concept.
Sally (Happy-Go-Lucky) Hawkins plays Roopi’s best mate and she is at the centre of a spoof of a well-known horror film that should have been a five-second visual gag but goes on and on for what seems like 30 minutes. — Peter Bradshaw