Between the Temples

Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane star in this daffy, occasionally delightful dramedy about a Jewish cantor who finds his life reinvigorated by reconnecting with his old music teacher.

“Between the Temples” is sort of a romance, but also really not, and mostly is very, very Jewish.

We’ve seen plenty of films set in Jewish communities, but this one from writer/director Nathan Silver is really steeped in a deep and abiding love for the people, the faith, the food, the music, the language and everything else. In a time when Jews are being attacked and excoriated all over the world, it’s just nice to spend some time with these folks.

Co-star Carol Kane got her start — and an Oscar nomination — for “Hester Street,” about Jewish immigrant arrivals to America. Her co-lead, Jason Schwartzman, has similarly had many roles that played off his essential Jewishness.

They play Ben Gottlieb and Carla O’Conner (née Kessler), a sad Jewish cantor and a retired music teacher who is looking to reclaim her identity by having her bat mitzvah at a rather advanced age. Carla taught Ben when he was a boy, and now the roles are somewhat reversed as he tutors her through learning to sing in Hebrew the necessary passages from the Torah.

In a short time, Ben finds his entire life reinvigorated by his newfound friendship with Carla. He had been wallowing in a pit of depression after the death a year ago of his wife, a famous novelist, and resorted to moving back home at the age of 42. He has even found himself unable to sing, plagued by a series of croaks and coughs whenever he tries, as if his despair is lodged in his chest and won’t let anything past.

A cantor, for those who don’t know, recites from the Torah in a formalized chant during Jewish liturgy, aka “going to temple.” So he can’t even do his job. Luckily, Rabbi Bruce (Robert Smigel), has been extremely patient, refusing to fire Ben and having him help out around Temple Sinai in Sedgwick, a neighborhood of Syracuse, New York.

Carol intervenes during a bar fight and takes an injured and drunken Ben home. Later they realize their connection and come up with the idea of her having a belated bat mitzvah. This involves spending lots of time together practicing, and Ben soon finds a spring in his step that’s been missing.

It’s left unclear if Ben has truly fallen in love with Carol, or if just having a new connection and purpose is what raises his spirits. It’s similarly murky if Carol returns these feelings — or is even aware of them.

Still, Schwartzman and Kane bring a delightful old/young pairing to the screen, somewhat reminiscent of “Harold and Maude.” She’s a fiercely independent woman, widowed long ago, who loves adventures and trying new things. Ben seems headed down a very dark path, and she represents a ray of sunshine that distracts him from his dispiritedness.

Silver shoots his subjects in a very intimate way, with a lot of extreme close-ups where we’re right in the actors’ faces. It can be a bit distracting at times, but also gives the thespians a chance to show little twinges of emotion that might otherwise pass notice.

Ben has various little side adventures and encounters. He takes to going to see a Catholic priest to talk about the differences in their approach to God. “In my faith, we don't have heaven or hell. We have upstate New York,” Ben zings.

He also has to navigate his relationship with his two parents, his birth mother Meira (Caroline Aaron) and his stepmother, Judith (Dolly de Leon), a convert to Judaism from the Philippines who is now a successful real estate broker. A lesbian couple isn’t any big shakes in their temple, though there’s something of a strain in the way they navigate the co-parenting of Ben.

I loved watching how elders in this community subtly — and not so — usher their children about in the directions they’d like them to go, especially when it comes to matters of the heart. Ben’s two mothers (his words) set him up with prospective dates without even so much as a by-your-leave. At one point a woman announces herself as his Jdate; Ben didn’t even know they had signed him up on the Jewish dating app.

Aaron, despite not getting a lot of screen time or lines, gives a really beautiful performance as Meira, a veritable fountain of maternal affection coupled with a streak of sadness she fears she’s passed on to her boy.

An interesting diversion arrives in the form of Gabby, Rabbi Bruce’s daughter, played by Madeline Weinstein. She’s been struggling to make it as an actress in New York City and had an engagement that ended disastrously shortly before the wedding. I liked how the parents, recognizing that these two adults are deeply screwed up, nudge them together in the hopes their pain will rub off each other and turn into romance.

I’ll pause here to note the uniform gorgeousness of Ben’s foisted love interests, including a shared predilection for jumping straight into carnal exchanges, despite the movie playing up his schlubby ways through clothing and makeup. I hadn’t realized short, middle-aged, precariously employed and borderline suicidal Jews living with their mothers were so irresistible.

The result is Ben winds up caught in an odd romantic triangle, in which he’s falling for Carla and Gabby is falling for him, and neither woman is aware of each other until the end, when things get blown up in a rather sitcom-y but still very funny/painful dinner party.

“Between the Temples” is a movie filled with a lot of little details and observations. For instance, the way the door to Ben’s basement bedroom doesn’t just creak, it sounds like a person screaming. Or the controlling glances that pass between Meira and Judith.

Does it all come together in a really satisfying and coherent way? Not really, but this film is less about providing comforting answers than raising a lot of niggling questions. Ben is a guy who is truly lost, and then finds his way again through his relationship with Carla, even if he possibly misinterprets where it will lead.

Whatever it is, it’s a story of hope, and that’s something we could all use more of these days.