When Israeli businessmen Oren (Roy Miller) walks into the small Berlin cafe where shy young Tomas (Tim Kalkhof) works as the pastry chef, there is an immediate attraction between the two men. Very soon afterward they set up a part-time home together to share when Oren makes his monthly visits to the city. Every time when he leaves to go back to Israel and his family, Tomas always ensures that Oren takes with him a box of cinnamon cookies as they are his wife’s favorites.
Then before their relationship can even gather up steam, Oren is killed in a car accident in Jerusalem, and a rather bereft Tomas not knowing exactly how to do to deal with his grief flies to Jerusalem to track down Oren’s widow and son. He has no plan beyond that and when he wanders into the small Kosher Cafe that Anat (Sarah Adler) runs, he talks her into giving him a menial kitchen job just so that he can hang around.
Anat is trying to cope with being a widow and helping her son deal with his loss, and at the same time keep her new struggling business afloat. When Tomas slowly reveals his culinary skills, he at least can help the cafe to start being successful, but he is very careful not to reveal the fact that he ever knew Oren, let alone how he played an important role in the man’s life. The unwittingly shared bond between these two different people who loved the same man is quite beautiful, but It is obvious that things between them have to come to a head, especially when a grateful Anat misinterprets Tomas’s friendship as romantic feelings.
This rather wonderful very humane drama is the feature film debut of Israeli writer-director Ofir Raul Graizer who treats this tale of love and loss with such a fine sensitivity. There is no comment on the morality of Oren’s separate relationships with Tomas and Anat, or any hint if had any history of infidelity. However what is very interesting is that Oren’s elderly mother very obviously picks up on the connection between her son and the German Baker, and silently gives her tacit approval.
The acting is pitch perfect. Both Kalkhof as the lonely young cakemaker of very few words who only really is happy when he is the kitchen baking and Adler as the weary slightly agnostic widow stuck in a Kosher family but adrift without her husband, gave such compelling performances.
The Cakemaker is one of those beautiful absorbing movies that slips under your skin and stays there for some time.
