Home >  A & E

Thursday, February 27, 2003

By Ron Weiskind,Post-Gazette Movie Editor

Life's a bitch and then you die, but the choices don't get any easier en route to the afterlife in Keren Margalit's affecting drama "All I've Got," tonight's opening feature of the 10th annual Pittsburgh Jewish-Israeli Film Festival.

The movie begins with young lovers trapped in a car wreck. Tamara lives, but Uri dies. "He's all I've got," she moans.

The next thing we know, an old woman is walking along a boat dock that turns out to be the way station to the afterlife, which is reached via cruise ship. The woman is Tamara, 50 years later, who has died of natural causes. She has been assigned to the ship reserved for those who expire in their youth. Uri awaits her there, still as young as the day he died. Tamara can be young again, too, if she is willing to give up all memories of the rest of her life -- her husband, her children.

If that's not hard enough, her husband, David, shows up. He could not live without her, so he figures he'll spend eternity with her. But maybe he won't.

The suspense that builds up over which man Tamara will choose becomes heart-rending as she wavers between the young man and the old, her young self and her old self, her memories and her youthful passion.

If the heavenly equivalent of the Love Boat seems a tacky way to get to heaven, wait until you meet the cruise director, Victor, who looks like the proprietor of a Russian delicatessen with his bald head, his manipulative manner and his perpetually unbuttoned beach shirt showing off his chest hair. But the loser for Tamara's affections may spend eternity alone -- we have to understand the torment that awaits him, especially because we know the sacrifices both men have made to be with her.

The movie cheats in one important way -- by Victor's ground rules, David should have lost the awareness of his marriage to Tamara. But we are willing to forgive writer-director Margalit for this lapse because someone has to be aware of Tamara's later life to set up her difficult choice. Actors Lea Szlanger, Nathan Cogan, Sylwia Trzesniowska and Amit Drori draw us into the movie's fanciful world, and Margalit is careful not to show us too much of what is in store for them. The destination intrigues us, but the journey is what counts in "All I've Got."