Between the Temples

Ben (Jason Schwartzman), a cantor in a small, upstate New York community, is suffering from a crisis in faith after the recent passing of his wife. He’s living with both is mother, and his step-mother, in the basement. On top of it all he’s also lost his singing voice. A chance encounter in a bar with his former elementary school music teacher, Carla (Carol Kane), turns his life on its side. Carla asks him to let her take his Bat Mitzvah class. He’s not sure, but something is already starting up for him.

Nathan Silver’s gentle screwball comedy—cowritten by C Mason Wells—is, as Manohla Dargis put it in the New York Times, “a coming-of-middle-age” story. It’s caring film about people who are realizing they still haven’t got everything figured out. Ben is lost, and sometimes tetchy, but he’s not as alone as he imagines.

A soulful, scathing Jewish American love story.

New Yorker

Delightfully tetchy… Silver has an appreciation for life’s ironies and likes putting a topspin on his comedy. The movie is consistently funny, but its humor tends to be fairly gentle because it’s rooted in human behavior rather than in condescending, judgmental ideas about such behavior.

Manohla Dargis, New York Times

A spiky, hilarious, and thoroughly unorthodox screwball comedy.

David Ehrlich, Indiewire