Broken Wings

It's been a long night's journey into a lousy day for the Ulmans. Harried single mother Dafna (Zilberschatz-Banai), an ill-paid midwife at a Haifa hospital, gets called in to work the night shift. Aspiring teenage chanteuse Maya (Maron) has to bail out of an important gig to watch her younger siblings, since big brother Yair (Gvirtz) is nowhere to be found. Next morning, Bahr (Elianana Magon) refuses to start her first day at kindergarten until Mum gets home. Finally, 11-year-old Ido (Daniel Magon) shows a fondness for jumping from risky heights, and that's where the trouble really starts. Actually, the family's woes began nine months back, as this tender, acutely observed first feature gradually reveals. Bergman's script is a small wonder of elegant economy, judiciously investing in little Bahr's melancholy, Yair's life-is-meaningless platform, and Dafna's first painfully awkward fumblings toward new romance. Warm yet clear-eyed and droll, always empathic, never lugubrious, the film earns its unexpected ending many times over. JWin.