Film Reviews

Only Human

• Rating:
• Director: Dominic Harari, Teresa Pelegri.
• Starring: Marian Aguilera, Guillermo Toledo, Norma Aleandro, Maria Botto.
• Details: Spain / 93 mins (15s).

A Spanish take on Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?, Only Human might well be the only opportunity you'll get this year to see a screwball comedy with an Israeli-Palestinian twist. Or, indeed, any year. Jewish TV presenter Leni Dali (Aguilera) brings Palestinian Rafi (Toledo) home to meet her family, a motley crew that gives the term dysfunctional a whole new dimension. Mother Gloria (Aleandro) is a depressed version of the typically smothering Jewish mother; grandfather Dudu (Max Berliner) is a blind veteran of the Israeli-Arab wars who still keeps his rifle in the closet; brother David (Fernando Ramallo) has recently converted to ultra-orthodox Jewish beliefs; and sister Tania (Botto) is a belly-dancing man-eating single mother in the throes of an early mid-life crisis. As for Leni's philandering father, well, Rafi manages to drop a tin of frozen soup on his head from ten stories up, thus precipitating yet another twist in the tale. Oh, and there's a wounded duck in the bidet. Consistently funny, Only Human contorts its storyline into outrageously improbable shapes but does so in a way that is always believable. The performances are excellent, the dialogue is razor-sharp, and the knowing subversion of the screwball genre - not to mention the appropriately named Dali family - is summed up in the final line: "Nobody's perfect." Wonderful stuff.

Review by Declan Burke