After a free-spirited Jewish patriarch drops dead during a party, his friends and family come together to sit shivah over him but spend much of their time complaining about his roguish ways. This ribald Mexican comedy (2006) by writer-director Alejandro Springall uses the seven days of shivah to launch a series of hilariously escalating confrontations, including one in which elderly men nearly come to blows over who's the more genuine Jew. Meanwhile angels invisible to the guests soberly calculate the dead man's virtues and vices. Raquel Pankowsky is effectively grating as the dead man's daughter, who's embittered by his abandonment of the family for an alluring shiksa. In Spanish, Yiddish, and Hebrew with subtitles. 98 min.
By
Joshua Katzman
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