Late Marriage

A mob of ostensibly mature, educated adults storms into a stranger's apartment and calls her a "b itch" and a "w hore." The woman's six-year-old daughter is in the room and the intruding thugs know she can hear every word. Then one of them holds a sword to the woman's throat and threatens to kill her. The little girl sees this and the invaders know she sees it.

This is intended to be funny.

No, honestly. We are meant to be amused that these people wield weapons and insults because they love a man who is the son of two of them and the nephew of the others. They do it because they don't want him to end up with the divorced woman they think is not suitable for him.

Late Marriage (Hatuna Meuheret, 2001, in Hebrew and Georgian with English subtitles) is from Israel. A viewer who is not Israeli could be willing to attribute to cultural differences some of what seems unpleasant about the movie. When, for example, everyone is eager to force the 31-year-old man to marry a 17-year-old girl, one considers the possibility that in Israel there is no such concept as statutory rape.

But even a cursory understanding of Israeli culture undermines Late Marriage. In the movie, which is set in a contemporary city, women are valued only as wives or potential wives. Their worth is determined solely by their beauty. Except that in Israel, women are educated. They serve in the army. The country has had a female prime minister. The unrelenting objectification of woman in Late Marriage makes no sense to anyone who has heard of Golda Meir.

Little about the movie makes sense. We're supposed to believe that the young man at its center has resisted hundreds of attempts to arrange a marriage for him because he is in love with the divorcee and has kept this secret from his disapproving family. In one scene, the parents find out and are trying to put a stop to the relationship. The son resists. He kneels in front of his father and orders him to use the sword to behead him because he cannot live without her.

Then, just seconds later, he meekly walks with his parents out of the woman's apartment and out of her life. The movie gives no explanation. The only one at which a viewer can clutch is that at age 31, he still has his parents paying all his bills. Whatever one could call preferring a credit card to a woman, it is not love. Or at least not love of the woman.

It is baffling when there is an apology between the woman who was held at swordpoint and one of the brutes who threatened to kill her. The apology comes from the woman who was threatened.

The movie also does nothing to make plausible the reconciliation between the father and son. In one scene, the father spits in his son's face and says with deadly earnestness, "You're as worthless as a dead dog."

The next time we see them together, they are standing at adjacent urinals in a public restroom. The son leans over and ogles his father's penis for several seconds. "That's a nice dick you have, Dad," the son says. "I love your balls, too." There might be viewers to whom the suggestion of incest is not troubling, but even their patience could be tested by what happens next. The son kneels in front of his father and buries his face in his crotch.

As the son mimes fellating his father, the older man chuckles. Perhaps it tickles. Perhaps he is relieved to discover that his son can do something that makes him less worthless than a dead dog. Perhaps . . . oh, it doesn't matter. By now, even the most patient viewer has ample reason to stop trying to give the movie the benefit of any doubt.

The young man whose marital status is central to Late Marriage is played by Lior Ashkenazi. The Israeli movie star exudes in Walk on Water (2005) compelling intensity. In Late Marriage, the best he can manage is a kind of sleepwalking sullenness.

At the end of the movie, he is married. We can guess that he's not happy about it. It is typical of Late Marriage that it leaves us once again to make guesses about important matters.

We can also guess he's a little drunk, which some generous souls might regard as excusing his boorishness. He drags his ill-at-ease young bride up in front of the crowd at the reception and remarks repeatedly on her beauty. The nicest thing he can say about her is that she is "a beautiful feather on my cap." Another man, perhaps the bride's brother although that's just another guess, tries to intervene so half-heartedly that one cannot understand why he bothers. Finally, the groom's father puts an end to the extended awkwardness by having the band play so everyone can dance.

They're at a wedding reception. Maybe they have reason to celebrate. For the rest of us, there is no reason to celebrate Late Marriage.