It Takes More Than Two To ‘Tango’

Tania Garbarski and Hippolyte Giradot in a scene from Sam Garbarski’s “Rashevski Tango.”

Tania Garbarski and Hippolyte Giradot in a scene from Sam Garbarski’s “Rashevski Tango.”

by George Robinson
Special To The Jewish Week

The use of the funeral of a patriarch/matriarch as a vehicle to bring together a troubled extended family is a narrative cliché that seems to be taking over the whole cinema world. Perhaps it’s a reflection of the fact that so many filmmakers are aging baby boomers who are beginning to lose their parents. Whatever the cause, this trope has a compelling logic and can be bent to a wide range of purposes.

The latest example is a very pleasant Belgian-made comedy-drama, “The Rashevski Tango,” directed by Sam Garbarski, which opens here on Sept. 11. It’s a frequently sprightly film that juggles numerous plotlines and rapidly changing tones with a fair degree of skill, which is probably the best thing you can say about

any of the films that use this device.

The family in “The Rashevski Tango” seem to have been created to embody all the various ways there are to be Jewish. The family matriarch Rosa, her estranged husband Shmuel and her brother Dolfo survived the camps. Shmuel went to Israel and became an Orthodox rabbi; Rosa held her family together without him, while Dolfo became a charming seducer of women, a behavior he still enjoys in his 80s. Rosa and Shmuel’s sons became a divorced doctor whose son served in the Israeli army on the West Bank and is now living with an Arab woman he wants to marry; and a shoe salesman who married a non-Jew and whose adult son and daughter are very confused about their Jewishness. The daughter wants to marry a Jew and raise a Jewish family, but her new boyfriend, Antoine, isn’t Jewish.
If it sounds complicated, that’s because it is. Fortunately, by the film’s midpoint Garbarski and co-screenwriter Phillippe Blasband sort it out sufficiently and, before things become entirely clear, the performances and the direction sparkle brightly enough that an audience should find it easy to be patient.

“Tango” has a rather graceful narrative structure, essentially beginning and ending in a sun-baked Israel where Shmuel (Moscu Alcalay) has found refuge from his family and the realities of the diaspora Jewish world. In the first visit, his brother, who he has not seen for decades and who hopes to bring him back to Belgium for Rosa’s funeral, confronts him. At the end, he is joined by a couple who have willingly embraced precisely the kind of Judaism that he found so comforting, but he is still a little haunted by the past he abandoned. It is a narrative arc that is not merely satisfyingly neat but also a lovely metaphor for the passages all the Rashevskis must undergo as they decide exactly what kind of Jews they want to be.
Garbarski’s visual style is pretty straightforward, based around close-ups and two-shots that emphasize the innate emotional connection among his ill-assorted characters. He is well-served by an excellent cast, particularly by Natan Cogan (a Samuel Fuller look-alike) as Dolfo, a randy old charmer who serves as the film’s moral anchor, and Hippolyte Girardot as the non-Jew ardently courting the old gent’s giddy great-niece (Tania Garbarski, the director’s daughter).

Produced in 2003, “The Rashevski Tango” is Garbarski’s first feature. His second, “Irina Palm” (2007) has a cult following, undoubtedly fueled by the presence of Marianne Faithfull in the title role, and he has two films in development right now. On the strength of “Tango,” it should be worth the time to see where he is headed next.

“The Rashevski Tango,” directed by Sam Garbarski, opens Friday, Sept. 11 at the Cinema Village (22 E 12th St.). For information, call (212) 924-3363 or go to www.cinemavillage.com.

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