Even when this rather entertaining road-movie dripping with sentimentality from Israeli filmmaker Dani Menkin ends, you cannot help think that this would have all played out so much better if it had been filmed as a documentary. As we follow recently fired cinema projectionist 60-year-old Ronnie (Alon Aboutpoul) leave Tel Aviv to fly to NY to track down the girlfriend who got away some 40 years ago and completely disappeared, it is the inserted film clips of total strangers who talk about their own ‘regrets’ that work best.
In a car lent by Yakov (Rani Bieier) his successful younger brother who emigrated to the US some years ago, Ronnie sets out just clutching an address for his lost love Rachel that his computer geeky American nephew (Patrick Michael Kelly) has dug up for him. It leads him across the country as he discovers that Rachel has moved several times, but before he leaves for the next address he is given, he shares stories with the new homeowners and he learns a little about the things that they regret in their own lives. When his car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, a passing student filmmaker called Myla (Naruna De-Macedo Kaplan) offers to help him out on the condition that he agrees to be filmed for the documentary.
Now with Myla tagging along, this leg of the journey involves another port of call where the inhabitant is called Rachel, but much younger one and a lesbian too boot. Then there is the side trip to Myla’s Jewish grandmother (Amy Dourghty) which serves as opportunity for her to serve up her own words of wisdom that people like her, do not have regrets at all.
When the real Rachel (Suzanne Sadler) is finally tracked down to her native Canada it really is an anti-climax as we are given very little opportunity to see if this really is the gregarious woman that the unmarried Ronnie has carried a torch for all these years. Instead we get an unexpected ending that Menkin and his co-writer Rod Bar have included presumably to ensure that the audience leave with a smile on their faces …. after shedding a tear or two first.
The story is very patchy and inconsistent and frankly is not that convincing, but the central figure of lonely Ronnie whose life has passed him by which relies on the sad hang-dog expression of the veteran Aboutpoul has enough pull for hopeless romantics to want him, and the movie to succeed.
