The Cakemaker

Here we have a beautiful movie about a woman who apparently has given up religious observance (why?) and opened a cafe although she's not particularly good in the kitchen (why?) and a couple of men who fall in love with each other (why?) but although they're extremely underwritten characters, you don't notice because you're carried along by the pacing and the photography and the architecture and the music and some nice cakes and cookies. ("What cafe would serve such a big slice of cake?" my wife says.) It doesn't hurt that the actors are well chosen, including one of Israel's top actresses, Sara Adler, who seems to specialize in strong but quietly uncertain women. Any movie featuring her is worth seeing, even if there isn't much else to it (as in, for example, 2012's "Aya").