If it wasn’t for the cast full of very well-known and celebrated actors, one could easily have mistaken that this sentimental melodrama was a Lifetime TV movie. Written and directed by French filmmaker Amanda Sthers and adapted from her own novel, its the preposterous story or retired Jewish American Cardiologist Harry Rosenmerck (James Caan) who has moved to Israel to start a pig farm, although we never really learn why
His mere presence in the holy city of Nazareth is upsetting all his religious neighbours particularly the local Orthodox rabbi, Moshe Cattan (Tom Hollander) and some very extreme Orthodox Christians. The Rabbi and Harry do at least turn their initial hostility into some sort of truce and actually end up becoming good friends. In fact the whole chemistry of the relationship between the two men is by far the best part of this slow languid movie.
Harry has definitely run away from his past in NY which includes his ex-wife Monica (Rosanna Arquette) who he rarely talks too, but now finds out that she is dying. He is estranged from his gay son David (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) one of NY’s most successful playwrights whose staged dramas are highly autobiographical and deal with his family relationships that he refuses to deal with in real life. Then there is Annabelle (Efrat Dor) Harry’s 34-year-old globe trotting daughter who is a perpetual student who has never worked a day in her life.
Even the mother’s impending death cannot bring this dysfunctional family together as each of them have their own issues they refuse to confront.
79 year old Caan playing a grumpy old man with such style at least adds some levity to this piece which the other actors much surely now regret ever signing up for, with the same concern that we have now watching it on the screen.
