Filmmaker Rama Burshtein is able to make believable the peculiar, unlikely actions of her chief character, Michal (Noa Koler), in the fascinating, not-very-comic The Wedding Plan (2017). Michal deeply yearns to be married that she might be “normal” and “respected” and, oh yes, loved; but she pleases almost no one and is even jilted by her fiancé. An Orthodox Jew, she starts maintaining that God will bless her with a new groom, to replace the man who jilted her, 22 days hence on the eighth day of Hanukkah. She proceeds to hunt for the unknown groom. A better examination of long-lasting deprivation for an unmarried soul could not be imagined. Burshtein and actress Koler render Michal a nice but weary woman, frowning with confusion, nervously hopeful, struggling for faith. Koler’s acting is incisive, great. The Wedding Plan, though rather thin, is meaningful un-arty art. Michal reminds me a little of Lily Bart in Wharton’s The House of Mirth except that she isn’t a tragic heroine, which is certifiably appropriate.
(In Hebrew with English subtitles)