a film that means well , but is too pushy in promoting its belabored point and too sentimental to be compelling as a drama .
it 's jeroen krabb ?
's melodrama about a community of jews in antwerp in 1972 who ca n't forget their bitter past .
the heroine is an attractive , carefree , nonreligious 20-year - old , chaja ( fraser ) , who wants to forget her jewish roots by getting involved in student demonstrations , screwing a student rebel leader , and living with her gentile friends away from her nagging mother
( s ? gebrecht ) and her self - absorbed , eccentric father ( schell ) .
her parents are survivors of the holocaust concentration camps , and her home life is filled with angst .
her mother is in denial about the past always busying herself by cooking soup and baking cakes and complaining about everything , while her father is more openly loving but has recently been absorbed in searching for two suitcases filled with mementos , a family album , silverware , and his old violin .
he buried them in a garden during the war while fleeing the nazis , but ca n't locate them now due to all the changes in the city .
out of frustration after quitting her job as a dishwasher and facing eviction from her apartment , she reluctantly accepts a job as a nanny with an hasidic couple that an old man in her parents ' apartment building , mr .
apfelschnitt ( topol ) , tells her about .
the hasidics are ultra - orthodox : they do n't go to the cinema or watch tv , adhere to strict dress codes , and strictly observe their religious laws .
chaja is at first put off by the way they expect her to follow their rules , but soon finds the wife , mrs .
kalman ( rossellini ) , to be kind and she becomes attached to one of her 5 children , a 4-year - old named simcha ( monty ) who does n't talk .
the stern mr .
kalman ( krabb ? ) is not friendly to her and considers her to be a whore because of the way she dresses .
to hammer home the point of how anti - semitism has n't gone away
there 's a barrage of overdone and uninvolving scenes with a sneering concierge ( bradley ) , who keeps making nasty remarks about jews and tries to make things inconvenient for them by preventing the jewish family from using the elevator .
the film is done in by its ham - fisted script as the story , adapted from carl friedman 's book " the shovel and the loom , " goes from one false note to another until it gets lost in all the goo of its sentimentality .
it starts off telling chaja 's story of how she 's a lost jewess trying to find her identity , then to her nanny role as she loves a mute child stuck in an insulated environment , and then it makes it a story about the lingering effects of the bitter past that ca n't be forgotten .
the effort seemed heavy - handed , as the film kept delivering too many obvious messages that it ponderously kept delivering through the stock characters .
the supporting cast consists of all wooden characters who give their roles a cartoonish flavoring
: chaja 's parents are given no human shades , while the janitor villain was a particularly annoying role that was one - dimensional and falsely acted .
the only ones who fought through the script and showed some feelings were fraser , whose effervescent face was expressive of both the trying times she was going through and the joys she felt -- but most admirably showing how she could be so mistaken as to think that she could forget her roots ; while rossellini gave a warm performance of a woman suffering in silence , but is strong in accepting her faith .
topol 's reassuring performance as the wise man who says all the right things to fraser , acts as the true voice of the filmmaker in explaining all the sufferings with common sense .
the film brazenly uses little simcha to get across its agenda of pointing out how the patriarchal world can be cruel when it ca n't love : it starts out by showing how under chaja 's loving care he 's taken to the duck pond and soon starts jabbering away , beginning by saying ' quack , quack ' and then going on to ask the four questions during a passover seder .
but by showing how the boy is so terrified of his strict father that he wets his pants in his presence , refuses to speak because of his stern dad , and eventually becomes the victim of a tragic accident , the film thereby exploits the boy 's sufferings and his story just becomes tiresome and not sincerely done
.
i felt i did n't just see a movie , but i attended a lecture for the whole 100 minutes of this serious but unappetizing story .
it was the kind of movie that you hoped would somehow end soon , as it seemed to be in the habit of rehashing its same viewpoint unnecessarily -- the message it keeps sending was already received .
in the last shot where father and daughter are hopelessly digging for the lost luggage , one has the impression that no one in the film learned anything about themselves or the past .
that seems strange , since i thought that was what this film was supposed to be about . unless i was mistaken and the film 's real aim was to make us cry over simcha .
ham - fisted script goes from one false note to another until it gets lost in all the goo of its sentimentality too pushy in promoting its belabored point and too sentimental to be compelling as a drama overdone and uninvolving scenes the film thereby exploits the boy 's sufferings and his story just becomes tiresome and not sincerely done serious but unappetizing the effort seemed heavy - handed , as the film kept delivering too many obvious messages that it ponderously kept delivering a particularly annoying role that was one - dimensional and falsely acted consists of all wooden characters who give their roles a cartoonish flavoring the kind of movie that you hoped would somehow end soon , as it seemed to be in the habit of rehashing its same viewpoint unnecessarily