A Movie You Might Have Missed #69: The Women's Balcony

It's been 11 years since I began this series highlighting movies I wished more people knew about. I'm rerunning it from the beginning because I still think these are movies you might have missed.

The women in an Orthodox Jewish community in Jerusalem are appalled when their synagogue gets a strict new rabbi. The ladies soon decide to fight back against his ultratraditionalist beliefs, while raising money to repair the "women's balcony" in the synagogue.

This film was a blockbuster in Israel and it isn't hard to see why. It is witty and intelligent while looking at realistic reactions to a complicated subject. Friendships are broken, marriages are stressed, and budding romances are tested as the moderate-extreme, male-female lines are drawn in this battle over something very dear to the hearts of all: how to practice their faith. However, it is all handled lightly and with good-natured humor.

One of the things I liked most was the sense of community and the ways the married couples interacted. It was interesting seeing how many universal themes there when looking at a situation about a foreign culture and different religion. That's because, of course, in the end we aren't all that different under the skin.

Perhaps the best praise I can give is that we all felt it was an equal to another favorite from Israel, Ushpizin. If you've seen that, then you know this is high praise indeed - and the sign of an entertaining film.