The Wedding Plan

The Wedding Plan is a 2016 Israeli film written and directed by Rama Burshtein, originally titled Through the Wall. The film premiered at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival in the Horizons section.^[1]

It won the Best Actress award in the category Israeli Feature Films at the Haifa International Film Festival 2016.^[2] It opened in the U.S. on May 12, 2017, to mostly positive reviews.

Plot

Michal (Noa Koler) is an unwed Orthodox Jewish woman in her early 30s. After over a decade of unsuccessful matches, Michal goes to a fortune teller (Odelia Moreh-Matalon) and admits she wants to love and be loved. The woman tells her her dreams will come true and also tells Michal that her son, Shimi (Amos Tamam), runs a wedding hall in Jerusalem promising her a discount if she marries there.

Sometime later Michal and her husband-to-be, Gidi (Erez Drigues), are at the tasting for their wedding. Sensing his discomfort Michal asks her fiancé to tell her what's wrong and he confesses that he doesn't love her. She decides to break off the engagement. After talking to her family and realizing that she cannot go through another decade of uncertainty, Michal decides to go through with renting the hall and to continue to prepare for her marriage as planned without her original fiancé, leaving it up to God to decide on a groom.

Michal goes on a series of increasingly unsuccessful dates: first with a man (Udi Persi) who has taken a vow not to look at anyone who is not his wife, next with a mute man (Jonathan Rozen) who becomes angered that she only agreed to see him after falling into despair. Michal later makes the pilgrimage to Nachman of Breslov where she is overcome with grief and cries aloud that she cannot feel God. The grave of Rabbi Nachman where she has been praying is separated between men and women, and a man on the other side of the barrier overhears Michal and asks her if she is alright. The man reveals himself outside the grave to be Yoss (Oz Zehavi), an Israeli pop star that Michal is a fan of. During their conversation Michal reveals that she is planning to get married on the last day of Hanukkah but has yet to find a groom and invites Yoss to her wedding.

On her return from her trip Michal meets Yoss again who asks her to marry him, but Michal rejects him, believing that he is not serious. As the date of her wedding approaches and no groom presents himself she begins to panic after more bad dates and tries to reconnect with Yoss, even proposing to him, but he kindly rejects her.

The night before her wedding Michal is filled with conflicting emotions as her mother (Irit Sheleg) doubts her completely, yet her sister and friends begin to have faith. The wedding party travels to the wedding hall where the guests wait in discomfort for something to happen. Shimi finally appears and asks Michal to marry him. Initially believing that she is hallucinating and later that Shimi is only acting out of pity, Michal agrees to marry Shimi after he reminds her of the first time they met; not at the taste test for her wedding, but at his mothers house.

References

External links

• The Wedding Plan on IMDb
• "Through the Wall". Haifa International Film Festival.