Cakemaker (The)

The grieving process can take on many guises, it can twist and turn and throw up some beguiling surprises. Love makes the world go around, food keeps the world going around...and, loss makes the world stumble - just for a second or two - until you can get back up and keep on going...

Ofir Raul Graizer's film is a delicate, beautifully scored, debut...iced with [an almost] sinister subtlety...that manages to gracefully avoid the darkness...but, it's there, lurking...like a stalker followed by a cloud of religious oppression...filled with an historical hate and distrust! This is skillful, captivating story-telling.

There are some many ingredients to The Cakemaker...a German [gay] gentile working/baking in a kosher cafe owned by the [non-kosher] wife of his dead lover! In less capable hands, this baker could have become a melodramatic nightmare...far from it, this is pure gentility.

The power is in the performances...much is left unsaid and so much is shown. Tim Kalkhof's baker is loneliness personified and amplified, he mourns so affectingly...he makes you ache, he makes you hope - with fingers crossed - that he doesn't do anything foolish, that he doesn't take us into the darkness. It's a spellbinding, dignified performance.

The widow...well, she has the weight of the world pressing down upon her shoulders. Single mother, struggling business, oppressive orthodoxy...and, a guilt and a secret. Her world was thrown upside down, torn inside out by accidence and deceit...and, she has to live with the consequence...her mourning is wrought out of anger, possibly rage! Sarah Adler gives her character a vitality and a vulnerability that holds her sorry-state-of-affairs together. She and Tim Kalkhof become a perfect fit.

And...that 'fit' is down to Ofir Raul Graizer's direction and writing. The idea that someone can love someone because that someone loved that someone...is mesmerisingly logical. It is the perfect definition of love.

The Cakemaker is an astonishing debut...a mature, menacing masterclass...in baking and emotion!

Trailer...