Between The Temples begins at the dining table, a focal point returned to time and again throughout the film. Ben (a mournful Jason Schwartzman) is gently asked whether it might be time for him to get some help. He's open to it, he says after a pause, a response that thrills his mother Judith (Dolly de Leon) and her wife Meira (Caroline Aaron). Their excitement is dialled up a notch as the doorbell rings; “She's here!” they cry. What follows is an uncomfortable, hilarious segment of misunderstandings and miscommunications as the woman Ben believes, from context clues, to be a therapist, is revealed to instead be a date his parents have set him up with.
The mise en scene is immediately impactful, establishing the film's tone – humour in discomfort, in desolation – and bringing in a sense of confusion and uncertainty that underlies much of the narrative.
Ben is a cantor who has, for the last year or more, been unable to sing. Losing his wife has taken his voice, and he sits in front of those gathered to worship in embarrassed silence as the rabbi (Robert Smigel) does his job for him, well aware that one of the only reasons he still has a job is his parents' sizeable donations to the synagogue. His other responsibilities include preparing students for their bar and bat mitzvahs, his current cohort an unenthusiastic group of 12-year-olds with a penchant for falling asleep in class.
After a drunken evening, Ben reconnects with his elementary school music teacher Carla (Carol Kane), who steps in to help him after a brief bar fight. Kane perfectly embodies the role. Her slightly unusual voice, her way of moving, the offbeat way she approaches life; she's the quirky teacher everyone remembers from some point in her life, seen without the rose-tinted glasses of childhood. Carla is a widow, living alone. Her only son is controlling and unpleasant, and she's been made redundant. Somewhat spontaneously, she decides to take her bat mitzvah – and there's only one teacher she wants.
Shot in 16mm and with a mildly nostalgic, grainy focus, Between The Temples never quite feels like real life. A number of passages throughout the film are unconventional – a psychedelic experience that, thankfully, doesn't go down the route of swirling floors and flashing colours; a slightly nightmarish series of shots of Ben's part-time love interest Gabby (Madeline Weinstein); a series of ultra close-ups on faces – and disjoint the mostly day-to-day events that make up the bulk of the film. It's a slice of life, but slightly off-kilter.
Despite, or perhaps because of, these detours from complete realism, Between The Temples is striking in its portrayal of grief. We see how sadness augments us, makes us unrecognisable to others, and alters the way we live our lives. Yet the majority of the time that loss is discussed in the film, it's almost overly casual. Ben and Carla talk about their spouses over lunch, details of how they died interspersed with side notes on just how good their burgers are. Ben goes to visit a Catholic priest in something of a crisis of faith, and wonders “If I believed in heaven, could I grandfather [his wife] in”? The priest's response is that the concept is a bit out of his wheelhouse. It's more of a Mormon thing.
“I'd jump into your heart and live there if I could,” Ben tells Carla at yet another uncomfortable dinner; the last of the film. That affection, the sense of finding mutual understanding, is what holds the story together. The central relationship is unconventional, and the film's ending is open to interpretation, but the value of genuine human connection, in all its forms, is undeniable. Between the Temples knows when to be funny just as well as it knows when to deliver a gut-punch one-liner, and in doing so paints a complex and absorbing picture of life and all its imperfections.
Between the Temples releases in UK cinemas on 23rd August.
