The Lost Lover

In this controlled slice of heartfelt liberal whimsy, based on AB Yehoshua's The Lover, Adam (Hinds), a Tel Aviv garage-owner, allows his teacher wife Asya (Aubrey) to be seduced by Gabriel (Bunce), a caricatured 'stranger', in the hope that it might assuage her long-held guilt over their deaf son's accidental death. When the stranger disappears, his wife's spirit hits bottom, and Adam is forced on a lengthy quest to find Gabriel (and therefore Asya). Faenza dovetails a more interesting subplot about the tentative relationship growing between Adam's more practical daughter Dafi (Bryant, first rate) and one of her father's young Palestinian employees, the sensitive but torn Naim (the equally excellent Vazquez).