BK ANDERSON

I thought the two women, Ronit and Esti, were very cruel to Esti's husband, David. Ronit was so distant from her past, her community and her father, she had no ethical dillema to resolve. She would leave the Ultra Orthodox community of her birth to go back to New York just as she did decades ago. Esti sees Ronit as a way out of her dutiful marriage and a chance to rekindle her passion and love. But Ronit only offers uncommitted hotel sex. She never even invites Esti to leave with her until the last minute possible. There seems to be no ethical dilemma for Esti who decides quickly to leave David, even though she has discovered she is pregnant. She decides to rob her child of a father without clearly imagining how this could impact the child's life. At the end, the only one struggling with an ethical dilemma is David, who must find a way to reconcile his love for Esti, his happiness at finally having a child, and giving up his whole life's work to become the rabbi to take over the synagogue after the death of the Rav. His struggle with his challenge to give his wife freedom while losing his own freedom to parent his child in his home, and to be free to choose the responsibility of being the sage of the community or to lose it all is the most authentic and believable struggle in the film. The audience can relate to him, his compassion and desire to be a righteous man. ( full disclosure: My wife and I are in a same-sex relationship. We both went through the struggle of coming out of a heterosexual marriage and not wanting to hurt our husbands or the children. We met a year or more after we left the marriage because neither of us wanted to have an affair on the side before leaving our marriages. We both wanted to leave our husbands with as much dignity for them as possible. And we hadn't even met yet.) For Esti to tell David that she was pregnant and then immediately ask for her freedom was very cruel to David, who had done her no wrong. At that point I began to lose any empathy I had for Esti. Ronit was already not a sympathetic character in the way she used Esti knowing she could leave but Esti would face the consequences of their tryst. So the movie, while billed as a love story beyween two childhood friends, was the dilemma of a righteous man who tries to live by the Torah with compassion even though he is losing his world. The screenwriters did not give Ronit and Esti the opportunity to struggle with the ethical consequences of their choices yet they still end up alone and not together like every lesbian movie in the past that had to have an unhappy ending to show that lesbians can never really be happy. So no one is happy at the end because 2 women were only emotional and physically passionate and could not figure out for themselves an ethical and righteous way to treat each other and their families. Once again women in film prove incapable of deep, rigorous, spiritual suffering and being able to create a life for themselves that is built on justice, compassion and wholeness. They are just another symbol of lust and passion to tempt a righteous man who alone has the freedom to "choose" freedom for himself and his wife. Disappointing.