Family Law

directed by Daniel Burman

with Daniel Hendler, Julieta Diaz, Arturo Goetz

"Unlike his intensely committed and colorful lawyer father, Ariel Perelman (a deadpan Daniel Hendler) is anal, inexpressive, becalmed in a dull job, and unsure of his place in life. Forced to loosen up a little when he snags a lively, beautiful wife [a pilates instructor] he thought was out of his league and becomes a parent, Ariel is further unsettled when his father comes to him with a proposition. On paper, Family Law follows the familiar arc of domestic trouble and redemption. Onscreen, it's a visually puckish, tragicomic celebration of an unassuming man's unsung goodness, which broadens, like Argentine filmmaker Daniel Burman's other movies, into a meditation on secular-Jewish identity in a less-than-tolerant society. Like his equally father-fixated, and equally wonderful, 2003 film Lost Embrace, Burman's beguiling tribute to his Jewish father—or, for all I know, the one he wishes he had—is warm and deep enough to give humanism a good name." (Village Voice) more at ifcfilms.com 35mm Cosponsored with LASP.

2006, color, 1 hour 42 minutes, Argentina/Italy/Spain/France