Sausage, bacon, and ham pizza for Passover

Cinco días sin Nora (Nora's will)

Crit

First things first: I disapproved of the U.S. distributor's English title, given the poetry of the direct translation of the original (which is, incidentally, the only title that appears in the subtitles). But in retrospect, it's a pretty clever bit of punning misdirection, for the will in question is not a legal testamentary document but the decedent's insistence on continuing to control her world from the beyond.

I don't believe that writer-director Mariana Chenillo intends this as an anti-Semitic film, but if anyone asked me how she distances herself from the provocative disrespect for Jewish ritual gleefully displayed by the protagonist, I'd be hard pressed to answer convincingly. As for representatives of the faith, we have one noxious rabbi, a quartet of silent, intimidating Orthodox pall bearers, an ineffectual aspirate to the rabbinate, and at last, in the final reel, a tolerant, humane rabbi.

The decent rabbi brings on such good feelings, in fact, that he smooths the rough edges with which Nora's survivors abrade one another, undercutting much of what has come before. A good film, finally, but one with lots of caveats.