Late Marriage

Like the protagonist of LATE MARRIAGE, writer-director Dover Kosashvili was born in Georgia (of the former USSR) and raised in Israel. Kosashvili's provocative debut feature is a very funny, but sometimes painful account of one man's late journey of self-discovery. Zaza (Lior Loui Ashkenazi) is thirty-one years old, and his parents, Yasha (Moni Moshonov) and Lily (the director's own mother, Lili Kosashvili), are supporting him while he attends grad school. They believe in the traditions of "the old country," and they are distraught and embarrassed because their only son is not married. After many abortive attempts to arrange a marriage for him, they discover that Zaza is having a torrid affair with Judith (Ronit Elkabetz). Zaza's parents won't let him marry Judith because she's older than Zaza, she's divorced, and she has a nine-year-old daughter, Madona (Sapir Kugman). It's a familiar story, but Kosashvili eschews easy laughs, stereotypes, and clichis in favor of subtly performed, well-observed family d...