Film

Only Human (2004)

Director: Dominic Harari, Teresa de Pelegri

Movie review

From Time Out London

In a comedy of botched introductions Leni (Marián Aguilera) arrives home in Madrid to introduce her boyfriend, Rafi, to her Jewish parents. The cramped apartment is a menagerie of eccentricity, home to Leni’s nymphomaniac sister, goofy Orthodox brother and senile grandfather. Leni’s announcement that Rafi (Guillermo Toledo) is Palestinian sends her mother into hysterics and a join-the-dots farce ensues. Left in charge of the kitchen, Rafi drops a slab of frozen soup out of the seventh-floor window and on to a passing pedestrian, knocking him clean out. As Rafi sweats, convinced he has killed the man, it slowly dawns on him that his victim might well be his fiancée’s father. There are some fork-tongued one-liners here – ‘there will be peace in Israel before your father gives me an orgasm’ – and the rivalry between Leni and her siblings plays out with bone-crunching anguish. But for all its boisterous chutzpah, there is little charm in this, the third feature from a husband and wife team.

---

• 
•