MINA TANNENBAUM

MINA TANNENBAUM (Directed by Martine Dugowson. Starring Romane Bohringer, Elsa Zylberstein, Florence Thomassin)

A perky, sometimes spiky, French variant on Jewish tragi-comedy, Mina Tannenbaum (an imposing mouthful of a title that is actually the name of the character played by Romane Bohringer) is a bizarre hybrid: like a Hollywood feminine melodrama, re-interpreted by late-period Woody Allen with a dash of mid-period Godard. In a skirt.

If that sounds like a mess, well, sometimes it is, but it is an inspiring, interesting and ultimately shockingly moving one. Martine Dugowson’s debut feature employs flashback and fantasy to conjure up the stuttering, frequently misfiring friendship between two contrasting Jewish girls/women, linked by their caricatured domineering mommas and similar romantic insecurities.

Dugowson takes essentially serious material and treats it in a playful manner that does not always come off. But if Mina never gels together as a satisfying whole, its parts are sheerly delightful. Bohringer, so impressive in Savage Nights, does a star turn as the more serious, introverted and artistic Mina, displaying a sure comic touch in the early sections while sowing the seeds for her characters’ later depressions, and she is more than matched by Elsa Zylberstein as the less attractive but more superficially confident Ethel.

This is a woman’s picture with courage and conviction, a fine sense of humour and the sophistication to side step the obvious hankie moments, making it something of a mina gem.