The Dybbuk Of The Holy Apple Field (1999) *

Directed by Yossi Somer. With Ayelet Z'urer, Yehezkel Lazarov and Orna Porat. A disappointing adaptation of a classic Yiddish play, already filmed in Poland in 1937. The story revolves around a broken promise made by two fathers to marry their newborn children. The original was a perfect synthesis of the Jewish Orthodox mysticism and the specifically Yiddish folk traditions. Transplanted to modern-day Israel, the film looses its entire ethnographic context, and becomes a soapy melodrama, a Romeo And Juliet Meets The Exorcist-type of nonsense.