The Cake Maker (2017)

Directed by: Ofir Raul Graizer | 104 minutes | drama | Actors: Sarah Adler, Zohar Shtrauss, Tim Kalkhof, Sandra Sade, Roy Miller, Stephanie Stremler, David Koren, Gal Gonen, Tamir Ben Yehuda, Eliezer Shimon, Sagi Shemesh, Tagel Eliyahu, Iyad Msalma

For the true lover of pastry, there is little to do in the cinema, both on the screen and in the foyer. This is finally changing with the German-Israeli feature film ‘The Cakemaker’. In this drama we meet Berliner Thomas, cake maker of café-patisserie Kredenz. His Israeli lover Oren travels to Berlin every month, until suddenly the sad news comes that he has died in an accident in Jerusalem. On a whim, Thomas takes a plane to Israel and visits the restaurant of Oren’s widow Anat. She knows nothing about her late husband’s bisexual escapades.

In ‘The Cakemaker’ we see how Thomas settles more and more in the widow’s family. Not out of perverse curiosity, but out of genuine interest in the daily life of his deceased friend. He doesn’t tell anyone that he knew Oren. In the meantime, the widow benefits from Thomas’s listening ear and from his unsurpassed Schwarzwälder-Kirschtorte (not kosher, but very tasty).

In ‘The Cakemaker’ we see that mourning has as many faces as there are deaths. Because what the widow and the cake maker mainly do is try to give the unimaginable a place in their lives. Thomas by usurping Oren’s life, Anat by stubbornly resisting self-pity and apathy.

The fierce ingredients of this drama (mourning, homosexuality, intrusion into a family, German-Israeli relations, religion) would be a misfire for many a director. But ‘The Cakemaker’ doses all this so subtly, so deliberately, that the result is an exemplary human drama. Without violent turns, without big words, always with the human dimension as a guideline.

‘The Cakemaker’ would be a lot less without the great actress Sarah Adler. She portrays a widow who reveals the entire spectrum of human emotions behind an apparently imperturbable appearance. There is less credit to be gained from the character of Thomas (Tim Kalkhof), but that is more due to the role than to the actor.

‘The Cakemaker’ shows once again that human resilience can do a lot and that despite all the misery, life has enough beautiful things to offer. Such as the great Schwarzwälder-Kirschtorte from café Kredenz. Then try to enjoy such a poor bowl of popcorn.