The Cakemaker (2018)

Film: The Cakemaker (2018)
Stars: Sarah Adler, Tim Kalkhof, Zohar Strauss, Roy Miller, Tamir Ben Yehuda
Director: Ofir Raul Grazier
Oscar History: It was Israel's official submission, but never made it far enough to actually score a citation (or even get shortlisted).
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Film is, at its center, a deeply personal medium.  Like all art, we bring with it our own hangups, our own insecurities, and project that onto the screen.  As a result, it's interesting to watch The Cakemaker as someone who has watched literally thousands of movies in my lifetime.  It's a movie that, were it an American film, would have taken a completely different direction, but I think also, were I a different person, I might have left with a different attitude toward its pace and purpose.  Currently in the running to be Israel's contender for this year's Foreign Language Film Oscar, the movie is challenging and provocative, looking at sexuality, grief, loneliness, and ethnic identity in a way under-explored even in present-day cinema.

(Spoilers Ahead) On the surface, The Cakemaker is a plot that's relatively conventional.  The film centers around Thomas (Kalkhof), a German baker who is having an affair with Oren (Miller), a married, Israeli businessman who comes and visits him once every month or so in Berlin, leaving behind his wife and child, but making no pretense about this being a "happy ending" situation.  Thomas seems fine with the situation until Oren one day vanishes, and after some incessant voicemails (that prove crucial later on in exposing his actions that follow), he learns that Oren has died in a mysterious accident.  Intent on finding out what happened to his lover, Thomas travels to Jerusalem and eventually becomes the employee of Oren's wife Anat (Adler), who falls for him first in friendship and then romantically as the movie progresses, all-the-while piecing together clues about Thomas and Oren's relationship.

In an American film, the centerpiece here would be the cause of Oren's death.  We're meant to believe as the film progresses that this could be something nefarious, like Anat killing him after discovering that he was gay or perhaps Moti (Strauss), her brother-in-law, killing his brother for shame.  But this isn't important to the actual film-his death remains accidental even if there's still the possibility that he was killed by someone; the important thing is how he died, and what he left behind.  The film eventually shows that Adat knew he was having an affair, and that Oren was planning on leaving her for Thomas the night she died, a fact that Thomas didn't know; Oren, despite protestations that he would never leave his wife, had clearly fallen in love with the young German baker, and was willing to uproot his culture and his family in order to be with him in Berlin.

This is a staggering revelation in the film, more so than the eventual reveal of Thomas as the lover, because the film is centered so specifically on grief over the loss of a loved one.  The movie is very insular, very claustrophobic about these characters because they have very little in terms of human interactions.  They both run small shops with a deep connection to their business, Thomas's successful and Anat's not so much (until Thomas comes to her rescue), but it's clear that Oren played an outsized role in their lives.  Anat has a few friends, but most were afforded to her by Oren (her son, her brother-in-law, her mother-in-law), and we see how lost she is in her world as a widow.  Thomas is even worse, as Oren was his whole world-we see no indications of a life or family, to the point where he can pick up and move to Jerusalem without any consequence.  The only other person (besides Oren) he loved appeared to be the grandmother who raised him, and she has died before the film begins.  We are taught by the cinema that single male loners are not to be trusted, that there's a reason for their isolation and that it will manifest in violent ways, but Thomas shows himself simply to be someone who exists in society, a good person who struggles to make connections with others.  Perhaps out of choice, perhaps out of homophobia, perhaps out of sheer shyness, the only sources of joy in his life are cakes and Oren, and with one wrenched away he is adrift the entire movie, struggling to find an anchor, and subsuming his former lover's life in hopes of perhaps bringing back the feeling he brought to his quiet life.

As a result, The Cakemaker is occasionally slow, but meditative and thoughtful.  Adler and Kaskhof are terrific, and the camerawork is superb.  There's little attention to the obvious implications of sexuality and race, but this exists rather than being spelled out (it's easy to find the homophobia or the complicated history between Israel and Germany, though this isn't the centerpiece but a necessary side effect of the story), which is smart as it makes the look at grief and loss that much more compelling.  In many ways a companion piece to the beautiful L'Attesa from two years back, The Cakemaker isn't what you'd expect from the trailers or the description, but it's insightful and felt, and most importantly, special.