Family secrets can be toxic and embarrassing, and in the worst-case scenario, they can also be extremely divisive.
The secret in Shemi Zarhin’s The Kind Words — due to be screened by the Toronto Jewish Film Festival’s Chai Tea & A Movie series on Sunday, February 28 at 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. at the Cineplex Cinemas Empress Walk theater — is unsettling as well.
Set in Algeria, Israel and France, and unfolding in Hebrew and French between 1963 to 2012, Zarhin’s film starts as a drama and ends as a mystery. It improves as it moves along, the tension rising with its plot twists. Premiered at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, it swirls around unanswered questions concerning two important issues –paternity and identity.
Dorona Cohen (Rotem Zissman-Cohen) and her two brothers, Natanel (Roy Assaf) and Shai (Assaf Ben-Shimon), are plunged into grief and mourning after their Algerian-born mother, Yona (Levana Finkelstein), dies following a surgical procedure to remove a tumor from her stomach.
In the wake of Yona’s untimely death, her remarried ex-husband (Sasson Gabai) suddenly appears. Dorona and her siblings don’t particularly like him, regarding him as an absentee father and a libertine. But they’re riveted by his shocking disclosure that he’s not their biological father.
It would appear that Yona was unfaithful to her husband, having become pregnant after trips to Paris to visit her sister, Rosa (Florence Bloch). Yona’s infidelity has already been telegraphed in the first scene of the movie, during which an unidentified young couple silently engages in tender sex.
Determined to ferret out the truth, Dorona decides to go to Paris and confront Rosa. She’s accompanied by her feuding brothers and husband Ricky (Tsahi Halevi), with whom she has marital problems. Much to their surprise, Dorona’s father shows up too. Rosa, at first, is reluctant to talk. But under pressure from her Israeli visitors, she divulges telling details that may alter their lives.
It would seem that Yona’s lover was a man named Maurice Leon, who now lives in the port city of Marseille. He’s a deeply mysterious figure who may have been an actor, or an Arab, for that matter. Dorona and her brothers recoil at the possibility that they may be of partial Arab ancestry. Their disgust speaks to the relationship between Jews and Arabs in contemporary Israel.
They finally track down Maurice (Maurice Benichou), a feeble old man. He doesn’t exactly brush them off, but he’s basically close-mouthed. The answers they desperately seek remain shrouded in fog. But their quest to unearth the truth bonds them closer together as a family.
The Kind Words is ably directed, but it’s slow off the mark. Viewers have to wait at least 40 minutes before it takes off and envelopes them in its grip. The cast shines, with all the actors turning in fine naturalistic performances.
Its shortcomings notwithstanding, this is a movie that speaks to the heart and most likely will resonate with viewers.