Noodle

Isreal, which has certainly had it's share of quirky comedy's, now has yet another film to add to it's ever growing list of contenders for world cinema. Noodle is a cute,low key comedy about an woman in her late 30's, working for El Al airlines as an in flight attendant,who's life is thrown into a tizzy by a five year old Chinese boy,who has been left by his mother in her flat, while she promised to be back in an hour, only to disappear. What follows is the woman,trying to establish contact with the boy's mother, and realizing that she is going to be the unwilling babysitter of a young boy who speaks only Mandarin, and not a word of Hebrew. The boy is given the nick name Noodle, as they're not sure what his real name is. What I admired about this little film is that, although it does dwell in sappy sentimentality, it never lowers or cheapens itself to the level of a John Hughes film (in other words,it's not a smarmy sitcom,with young children who know seem to know more than adults do). A little bit of searching out may be in order to see this little gem.